Such a wonderful piece. I'd not heard of Julia Robinson or Yuri Matiyasevich...what a touching story of two people forming a friendship across time, place and culture.<p>> Julia thought of mathematicians “as forming a nation of our own without distinctions of geographical origins, race, creed, sex, age, or even time (the mathematicians of the past and you of the future are our colleagues too) — all dedicated to the most beautiful of the arts and sciences.”<p>The mathematics is way over my head, but I find this inspiring & would love to see how we might discover/co-create realms beyond such distinctions in other endeavors.
I'm utterly confused by the description of the solution of Hilbert's 10th problem.<p>On one hand, the article claims that Diophantine equations are polynomials. On the other hand, it claims that when JR is true, a Diophantine equations grows faster than a polynomial.<p>How can a polynomial grow faster than polynomial? That seems like a contradiction to me.