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Yitang Zhang’s Pursuit of Beauty in Math | The New Yorker

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Yitang Zhang bided his time teaching calculus. Then he solved a hundred-and-fifty-year-old math problem.

Save this story Save this story Unable to get an academic position, Zhang kept the books for a Subway franchise. Photograph by Peter Bohler I don’t see what difference it can make now to reveal that I passed high-school math only because I cheated. I could add and subtract and multiply and divide, but I entered the wilderness when words became equations and x’s and y’s. On test days, I sat next to Bob Isner or Bruce Gelfand or Ted Chapman or Donny Chamberlain—smart boys whose handwriting I could read—and divided my attention between his desk and the teacher’s eyes. Having skipped me, the talen

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