Enlightenment · Europe · Science

1742

Goldbach's Conjecture

May 17, 1742

In a letter to Euler, the Prussian mathematician Christian Goldbach conjectured that every even number greater than two was the sum of two primes. Euler refined it. Neither could prove it. Three centuries later, despite trillions of computer checks and partial proofs, the conjecture remains unresolved, a beautiful unfinished line across mathematics.