Goldbach’s conjecture is one of the best-known unsolved problems in mathematics. It is a simple matter to check the conjecture for a few cases: 8 = 5+3, 16 = 13+3, 36 = 29+7.

"I suspect the Goldbach Conjecture is true" is not a particularly interesting thing to say. Lots of properties apply to all the integers--that doesn't mean anything in particular.

One of the oldest unsolved problems in mathematics is also among the easiest to grasp. The weak Goldbach conjecture says that you can break up any odd number into the sum of, at most, three prime ...

The Goldbach conjecture, devised by historian and mathematician Christian Goldbach in 1742, proposes that every even number is the sum of two primes; for example, 8 = 3 + 5.

Euler replied, pointing out that Goldbach’s statement is equivalent to the conjecture that every even integer greater than or equal to 4 is the sum of two primes. He went on to note, “that ...

What's doubly interesting about Goldbach is that while it's simple to understand, nobody has been able to prove, mathematically, that this conjecture is true. It sure as hell appears to be true ...

One of Goldbach's earlier conjectures was that every odd composite integer could be expressed as twice a perfect square plus a prime. For example, 9 = 2 (12)+7, and 15 = 2 (22)+7. This week's ...

This paper describes how the even Goldbach conjecture was confirmed to be true for all even numbers not larger than 4 · 10¹⁸. Using a result of Ramaré and Saouter, it follows that the odd Goldbach ...

More by Davide Castelvecchi This article was originally published with the title “Goldbach's Prime Numbers” in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 306 No. 5 (May 2012), p. 23 ...