Mathematicians crack 44-year-old problem

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Zilin Jiang from Technion — Israel Institute of Technology and Alexandr Polyanskii from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) have proved László Fejes Tóth’s zone conjecture. Formulated in 1973, it says that if a unit sphere is completely covered by several zones, their combined width is at least π. The proof, published in the journal Geometric and Functional Analysis, is important for discrete geometry and enables new problems to be formulated.

Zilin Jiang from Technion — Israel Institute of Technology and Alexandr Polyanskii from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) have proved László Fejes Tóth’s zone conjecture. Formulated in 1973, it says that if a unit sphere is completely covered by several zones, their combined width is at least π. The proof, published in the journal Geometric and Functional Analysis, is important for discrete geometry and enables new problems to be formulated.

Discrete geometry studies the combinatorial properties of points, lines, circles, polygons, and other geometric objects. For example, it deals with the questions: What is the largest number of equal balls that can be fitted around another ball of the same size? Or, what is the densest way to pack equal-sized circles in a plane, or balls in a containing space?

Continue reading at Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology

Image Credit: MIPT Press Office