Collatz conjecture
Conjetura de Collatz
- Date
- 1937 · confidence medium
- Place
- Hamburg, Germany
- Credited to
- Lothar Collatz
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What was discovered
Collatz proposed that, by repeatedly applying the rule of dividing even numbers by two and multiplying odd numbers by three and adding one, any positive integer eventually reaches 1. Despite its simple statement it remains unproven, and has spurred advances both in computational theory and, in 2019, a notable result by Terence Tao.
The exact place where Collatz formulated the conjecture is not precisely confirmed; he had received his doctorate two years earlier and is assumed to have been working in Germany.
What it led to
- Numerous computational verification attempts
- Terence Tao's result (2019)
- Connections to computational complexity theory