Vinay Deolalikar, who works at the research arm of Hewlett-Packard in Palo Alto, California, believes he has solved the riddle of P vs NP in a move that could transform mankind’s use of computers as well as earn him a $1m (£650,000) prize.
P vs NP is one of the seven millennium problems set out by the Massachusetts-based Clay Mathematical Institute as being the “most difficult” to solve.
This is a familiar problem for all mathematicians which is so complex that the Clay Mathematics Institute in Boston had even set a reward of US$ 1 million almost a decade back for the person who can solve it.
Deolalikar holds an Electrical Engineering degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. He has claimed that he could solve the problem but, it is yet to be confirmed by other researchers that whether he could actually provide the correct solution.
Deolalikar has released his 100-page proof online, and in a 6 August email to his “fellow researchers”, he wrote: “This work was pursued independently of my duties as a HP Labs researcher, and without the knowledge of others. I made several unsuccessful attempts these past two years trying other combinations of ideas before I began this work.”
You might like: