Tag: Niall C. D. Ferguson

  • Science & Tech

    What are the “Hard Problems” in the social sciences?

    Just over a century ago, one of the world’s leading mathematicians posed this question to a number of his colleagues: What are the most important unsolved questions in mathematics? The answers – which David Hilbert then ranked in what he believed to be their order of importance – produced a list of 23 mathematical problems…

    7–10 minutes
  • Science & Tech

    Posing the Big Questions

    In 1900, renowned mathematician David Hilbert laid down a challenge to future generations: 23 handpicked mathematical problems, all difficult, all important, and all unsolved. Since then, countless mathematicians around the world have struggled to solve the 23 “Hilbert Problems.” To date, 10 have been fully solved, 11 are partly solved or simply cannot be solved, and two remain at large…

    5–7 minutes