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Selected article 25

The real part (red) and imaginary part (blue) of the critical line Re(s) = 1/2 of the Riemann zeta-function.

The Riemann hypothesis, first formulated by Bernhard Riemann in 1859, is one of the most famous unsolved problems. It has been an open question for well over a century, despite attracting concentrated efforts from many outstanding mathematicians.

The Riemann hypothesis is a conjecture about the distribution of the zeros of the Riemann zeta-function ζ(s). The Riemann zeta-function is defined for all complex numbers s ≠ 1. It has zeros at the negative even integers (i.e. at s=-2, s=-4, s=-6, ...). These are called the trivial zeros. The Riemann hypothesis is concerned with the non-trivial zeros, and states that:

The real part of any non-trivial zero of the Riemann zeta function is ½

Thus the non-trivial zeros should lie on the so-called critical line ½ + it with t a real number and i the imaginary unit. The Riemann zeta-function along the critical line is sometimes studied in terms of the Z-function, whose real zeros correspond to the zeros of the zeta-function on the critical line.

The Riemann hypothesis is one of the most important open problems of contemporary mathematics; a $1,000,000 prize has been offered by the Clay Mathematics Institute for a proof. Most mathematicians believe the Riemann hypothesis to be true. (J. E. Littlewood and Atle Selberg have been reported as skeptical. Selberg's skepticism, if any, waned, from his young days. In a 1989 paper, he suggested that an analogue should hold for a much wider class of functions, the Selberg class.)

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