Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture

Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture is a 1992 novel by Greek author Apostolos Doxiadis.

It concerns a young man's interaction with his reclusive uncle, who sought to prove that any even number greater than two is the sum of two primes, which is a famous unsolved mathematics problem called Goldbach's Conjecture. This unusual novel discusses mathematical problems and some recent history of mathematics.

As a publicity stunt, the publishers (Bloomsbury USA in the U.S. and Faber and Faber in Britain) announced a $1 million prize for anybody who proved Goldbach's Conjecture within two years of the book's publication in 2000. Not surprisingly, given the difficulty of the problem, the prize went unclaimed.

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