NRI cracks toughest math riddle

An Indian-origin IT wizard in the US claims to have solved one of the most complex mathematical problems that could transform the use of computers.

Vinay Deolalikar, who works at the research arm of Hewlett-Packard in California, says he has solved the riddle of P vs NP, one of the seven millennium problems set out by the Massachusetts-based Clay Mathematical Institute as being the “most difficult”. If his claim is proved correct, Deolalikar will earn a whopping $1 million prize, the Daily Telegraph reported.

The P versus NP informally asks whether every problem with a yes-or-no answer whose solution can be efficiently checked by a computer can also be efficiently solved by a computer.

Deolalikar claims to have proven that P, which refers to problems whose solutions are easy to find and verify, is not the same as NP, which refers to problems whose solutions are almost impossible to find but easy to verify.