The artificial intelligence company DeepMind is delving into pure math. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

Last week, Yitang “Tom” Zhang, a popular math professor at the University of New Hampshire, stunned the world of pure mathematics when he announced that he had proven the “bounded gaps” conjecture ...

It’s an educated guess, not a proof. But a good conjecture will guide math forward, pointing the way into the mathematical unknown. Mountain climbing is a beloved metaphor for mathematical research.