Chinese migrant worker Yu Jianchun has no mathematics background nor a college degree, but he’s currently being hailed as a real-life version of Will Hunting, the Matt Damon’s character in the 1997 Oscar-winning film “Good Will Hunting”, after discovering an alternative method to verify Carmichael numbers. What are Carmichael numbers? They’re also called “pseudo primes”, or large numbers that only appear to be prime numbers, which are only divisible by one and themselves. “I made my discoveries through intuition. I would write down what I thought when inspiration struck about the Carmichael,” said Yu. Continue reading for more pictures and information.
“After verifying his solution to the Carmichael numbers, Yu apparently wrote several universities about it, but they wouldn’t give him the times of day, because he was just a delivery man with no formal studies in mathematics. But he recently got the chance to present them at Zhejiang University, after professor Cai Tianxin sent him an invitation. On June 13, he presented his proof, along with solutions to four other complex math problems. His way of verifying Carmichael numbers stunned the attendance, including Cai Tianxin, who later told reporters that Yu’s proof was much more efficient than the traditional one,” reports Oddity Central.
