Teen cracks old math puzzle

A 16-year-old explains a 300-year-old math problem that only experts have solved.

STOCKHOLM (AFP) – A 16-year-old Iraqi immigrant living in Sweden has cracked a maths puzzle that has stumped experts for more than 300 years, Swedish media reported on Thursday.

In just four months, Mohamed Altoumaimi has found a formula to explain and simplify the so-called Bernoulli numbers, a sequence of calculations named after the 17th century Swiss mathematician Jacob Bernoulli, the Dagens Nyheter daily said.

Altoumaimi, who came to Sweden six years ago, said teachers at his high school in Falun, central Sweden were not convinced about his work at first.

"When I first showed it to my teachers, none of them thought the formula I had written down really worked," Altoumaimi told the Falu Kuriren newspaper.

He then got in touch with professors at Uppsala University, one of Sweden's top institutions, to ask them to check his work.

After going through his notebooks, the professors found his work was indeed correct and offered him a place in Uppsala.

But for now, Altoumaimi is focusing on his school studies and plans to take summer classes in advanced mathematics and physics this year.

"I wanted to be a researcher in physics or mathematics; I really like those subjects. But I have to improve in English and social sciences," he told the Falu Kuriren.

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Mohammed Altoumaimi, un iraquí de 16 años residente en Suecia desde hace seis, ha desarrollado una fórmula propia para solucionar el enigma de los números de Bernoulli, un problema matemático del siglo XVII. Aunque el problema ya ha sido resuelto con anterioridad, la originalidad del trabajo de Altoumaimi y su juventud han asombrado a las instituciones suecas, de ahí que la Universidad de Uppsala le haya ofrecido la posibilidad de hacer algunos cursos el próximo año, informó hoy el diario "Falu Kuriren". Altoumaimi, que reside en Falun, localidad de 40.000 habitantes en el centro de Suecia, dedicó 4 meses a buscar una fórmula que simplificase el cálculo de los números de Bernoulli, una sucesión de números racionales con conexiones en la teoría de números y denominados así por el matemático suizo Jakob Bernoulli (1654-1705). "Cuando se la presenté a mis profesores, nadie creyó que fuera correcta", dijo al diario el joven, que decidió contactar con expertos en el tema de la cercana Universidad de Uppsala, que comprobaron la corrección de sus formulaciones. "Ha sido capaz de encontrar una conexión por cuenta propia, aunque lo que ha conseguido es ya conocido y no ha resuelto nada que antes no se supiera", afirmó Lars-Åke Lindahl, catedrático de Matemáticas en la citada universidad.