Mathematicians Use New Tricks To Solve Century-Old Geometry Problem | Editor's Blog - IFLScience

One word you don’t often associate with math is creativity. Sure, mathematicians are logical, but they are rarely seen as having the same flair that artists do, according to Editor's Blog - IFLScience. 

Photo: Laborant/Shutterstock

However, many mathematical questions require an out-of-the-box style of thinking, and the “Rectangular Peg Problem” is the perfect example of this.

Way back in 1911, German mathematician Otto Toeplitz proposed that any closed curve (i.e. that starts and ends at the same place) will contain four points that when connected form a square. Whilst Toeplitz’s square peg conjecture was quickly proven for a continuous (no breaks) and smooth (no corners) closed curve in 1929, the puzzle has yet to be solved for continuous non-smooth curves...

“The problem is so easy to state and so easy to understand, but it’s really hard,” Associate Professor Elizabeth Denne of Washington and Lee University, told Quanta Magazine...

But a collaboration between mathematicians Joshua Greene of Boston College, US, and Andrew Lobb from Durham University, UK, formed to cope with the Covid-19 lockdown, has ended the century-long wait for a solution to the rectangular peg problem. Focused on the smooth, continuous closed curve conditions the duo set their creative juices flowing, and combined old thoughts with new perspectives to land upon the proof. Buckle up, everyone…
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Source: IFLScience