Title: Mathematics is an Older Persons Game!

Abstract: G. H. Hardy famously (or rather infamously) believed that "Mathematics is a Young Man's Game". While the "Man" part has been refuted many times already, e.g. Emmy Noether, Maryam Mirzakhani, Maryna Viazovska, Ingrid Daubechies come to mind (and many others!) In this talk I will refute the "Young part". For example:

*Louis de Branges (Purdue University), who at the age of 54 proved the Bieberbach conjecture, one of the major open problems of the 20th century

*Yitang Zhang (Purdue Math PhD, 1991), who at the age of 58 came ever-so-close to proving the Twin Prime Conjecture

*Roger Apery, who at the age of 64 proved that Zeta(3) is an irrational number

*Avraham Trahtman, who at the age of 63 proved the Road coloring conjecture

1. Louis de Branges (b. 1932) [McTutor]

   • Title of Louis de Branges's 1957 Cornell University PhD thesis

   • Louis de Branges's Elegant new proof (PAMS 1959) of the Stone-Weierstrass theorem

   • MathReview of 1970 Ramanujan Hypothesis paper

   • Louis de Brange's Flawed 1970 Ramanujan Hypothesis paper

   • I. Pedersen's Science News 1984 article

   • Louis de Branges's seminal Acta Mathematica 1984 paper proving the Bieberbach Conjecture

   • Paul Zorn's Math Magazine 1986 expository paper on de Branges' proof of the Bieberbach Conjecture

   • Personal accounts by L. de Branges, W. Gautschi and R. Askey, from the Proceedings of the March 11-14 1985 Symposium in honor of Louis de Branges.

   • Wolfgang Fuchs' poem, read at the banquet on the Bieberbach conjecture Symposium on March 12, 1985.

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2. Yitang Zhang (b. 1955) [New Yorker article]

   • Yitang Zhang's 1991 Purdue PhD thesis, advised by T.T. Moh

   • Yitang Zhang's MathSciNet Profile

   • Yitang Zhang's May 2014 seminal Annals of Math paper

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3. Roger Apery(1916-1994) [Article by son Francois   McTutor]
   • Roger Apery's MathSciNet Profile

   • Roger Apery's seminal announcement of the irrationality proof of ζ(3)

   • Alf van der Poorten's classic exposition (Math Intelligencer 1979) of Apery's proof that ζ(3) is irrational

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4. Avraham Trahtman (b. 1944) [article by Ron Heller]

   • Avraham Trahtman's MathSciNet Profile

   • Avraham Trahtman's seminal paper proving the Road Coloring Conjecture

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