Two Invitations

At the beginning of April, a major event took place in the mathematics community.

In the latest issue of Annual Mathematics, the proof to the Collatz conjecture was published.

The Collatz conjecture was as followed: Start with any natural number N. If it was odd, then the next number was 3N+1. If it was even, then it became N/2. After some limited number of iterations, the sequence would inevitably fall into [4,2,1].

This conjecture was popular during the 1980s.

Prior to this, some people had used supercomputers to test numbers below 1.1 trillion. They determined that no matter what number they chose, they would end up in the "421" curse.

Due to this miraculous property, this conjecture was also known as the "Hail conjecture" because it was like a hail—fast and unstoppable.

But now, Vera's thesis provided proof for this age-old conjecture.

That the Collatz conjecture was true.

The thesis received worldwide attention.