Minggu, 20 Maret 2022

How an Inmate Serving a Murder Sentence Made a Huge Math Discovery

Earlier this year, a first-time academic author published a new mathematical study in the journal Research in Number Theory. The twist? The researcher, Christopher Havens, is also serving a 25-year sentence in the Washington Department of Correction following a murder conviction.

Inmates often send requests to publishers and publications, because access to specific books and even entire genres of books are extremely limited in prisons. The guidelines are byzantine, and prisoner rights organizations hold up restricted access to books as an example of a violation of the First Amendment.

It's in this context that chemist and professor Marta Cerruti's partner received a request from Havens for an annual subscription to the Princeton-based journal Annals of Mathematics. And it happens that Cerruti's father is a number theorist who was willing to take a chance on Havens, who was trying to teach himself calculus and number theory without any access to a qualified teacher.

"To test him, he gave Havens a problem to solve," Cerruti recently wrote in The Conversation. "In return, my father received a 120-centimetre-long piece of paper in the mail, and on it was a long and complicated formula. [T]o his surprise, the results were correct!"

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