How Not to Prove Goldbach’s Conjecture
02 june 2026
Some mathematical statements are deceptively simple. Goldbach's conjecture is one of those statements. The story starts on the 7th of June 1742 when mathematician Christian Goldbach wrote a letter to his friend Leonhard Euler that he couldn't prove the following conjecture: "Every even number greater than two is the sum of two primes." Euler wrote back that he was certain the statement holds true but was unable to verify it mathematically. Nearly three centuries later, no one has been able to prove the statement.
Albert Pierik
