? 1969, another British mathematician, Adrian R.D. Matthias, began to study Ramsey's theorem. He wants to know if Ramsey has found an infinite version of this phenomenon. This is a theoretical problem in the field of set theory, which involves infinite problems in mathematics. This problem can be likened to a lottery ticket: there is a special infinite lottery ticket, which has an infinite number of rows, and each row has an infinite number. They follow a rule that no two different lines can have infinite numbers. There are too many lines on the lottery ticket to be numbered. At the beginning of the lucky draw, the organizer will draw an unlimited number of numbers. If a line of the lottery has an infinite number, the lottery will win the prize.

? ? In 1970s and 1990s, this problem became a mystery, and aggregators around the world tried to solve it. The protagonist of the story, Asger Dag enquist, an associate professor of mathematics and science at the University of Copenhagen, first encountered this problem in 2002 when he was studying for his doctorate at UCLA.

? He said: "Since the 1990s, the research in this field has been stagnant, because no one has made any progress in solving this problem." . I am fascinated by this, because it is an old problem that involves our infinite understanding of mathematics, and solving this mystery has become my dream, although I have not known how to accomplish what others can't solve for decades. "

? On 20 1 1 year, Trenquist, who had been hoping to solve the Matia problem, came to work in the Department of Mathematical Sciences of the University of Copenhagen, marking a new beginning. Here, he and postdoctoral researcher David Schritter began to solve this problem. Trnquist said: "In 20 14 years, I decided to rethink this problem from the beginning and find a new solution. In addition to the original puzzle, Matthias also came up with a baby puzzle. Neither of these problems has been solved. I managed to solve the problem of the baby version and then wrote a paper. "

As soon as this paper was published, many mathematicians all over the world responded. Its sudden appearance rekindled mathematicians' enthusiasm for this field. Other mathematicians also began to study on the basis of this paper, and pieced together more and more complete images for this problem. When trnquist and schrittesser were writing a paper to solve another small problem in this puzzle, they suddenly realized that they might be closer to solving the whole puzzle than they thought. After that, things developed rapidly and finally found the answer after a few weeks.

T rnquist and schrittesser published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAs). They found that complete coincidence does not exist, that is, no lottery ticket can win the prize forever.