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Mathematics is a universal language Even so a Kazakh mathematicians

claim to have solved a problem worth a million dollars is proving hard to

evaluate ndash in part because it is not written in English

Mukhtarbay Otelbayev of the Eurasian National University in Astana

Kazakhstan says he has proved the Navier-Stokes existence and

smoothness problem which concerns equations that are used to model fluids

ndash from airflow over a planes wing to the crashing of a tsunami The equations

work but there is no proof that solutions exist for all possible si tuations and

wont sometimes blow up producing unrealistic answers

In 2000 the Clay Mathematics Institute now in Providence Rhode Island

named this one of seven Millennium Prize problems offering $1 million to

anyone who could devise a proof

Otelbayev claims to have done just that in a paper published in the

Mathematical Journal also based in Kazakhstan I worked on the problem

on and off for 30 years he told New Scientist in Russian ndash he does not

speak English

Mathematical Babel fish

However the combination of the Russian text and the specialist knowledge

needed to understand the Navier-Stokes equations means the international

mathematical community which usually communicates in English is having

difficulty evaluating it Alt hough mathematics is expressed through universal

symbols mathematics papers also contain large amounts of explanatory

text

Over the years there have been several alleged solutions to the Navier-Stokes

problem that turned out to be wrong says Charles Fefferman of Princeton

University who wrote the official formulation of the problem for Clay Since Idont speak Russian and the paper is not yet translated Im afraid I cant say

more right now

Otelbayev is a professional so mathematicians are paying more attention to

his proof than is typical for amateur efforts to solve Millennium Prize

problems which are regularly posted online

The Russian-speaking Misha Wolfson a computer scientist and chemist at

the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is attempting to spark an online

group effort to translate the paper While my grasp on the math is good

enough to enable translation up to this point I am not qualified to say

anything about whether or not the solution is any good he says

Stephen Montgomery-Smith of the University of Missouri in Columbia who is

working with Russian colleagues to study the paper is hopefulWhat I have

read so far does seem valid he says but I dont feel that I have yet got to the

heart of the proof

Otelbayev says that three colleagues in Kazakhstan and another in Russia

agree that the proof is correct

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Ka zakh mathematician may have solved $1 million puzzle

1509 22 January 2014 by Jacob Aron and Katia Moskvitch

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Burden of proof

Understandably a high burden of proof is required to claim the $1 million

prize Clays rules say the solution must be published in a journal of

worldwide repute and remain unchallenged for two years before it can even

be considered Nick Woodhouse president of the Clay Mathematics Institute

declined to comment on Otelbayevs proof

It is currently being translated by my students and will be available soon

says Otelbayev He says that he will publish it again once it is translated into

English ndash initially in a second Kazakh journal and then perhaps abroad

To date only one Millennium Prize problem has been officially solved In2002 Grigori Perelman proved the Poincareacute conjecture but later withdrew

from the mathematical community and refused the $1 million prize

A possible solution for another problem known as P vs NP caught

mathematicians attentions in 2010 but later proved to be flawed Whether

Otelbayevs proof will share the same fate remains to be seen

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