Gödel and the nature of mathematical truth
A talk with Rebecca Goldstein

Mathematicians and physicists are just as guided by principles of elegance and beauty as novelists and musicians are. Einstein told the philosopher of science Hans Reichenbach that he'd known even before the solar eclipse of 1918 supported his general theory of relativity that the theory must be true because it was so beautiful. And Hermann Weyl, who worked on both relativity theory and quantum mechanics, said "My work always tried to unite the true with the beautiful, but when I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful."

Das Clay Mathematics Institute (CMI) hat im Jahr 2000 sieben mathematische Probleme benannt. Löst man nur eine dieser Aufgaben, wird man von der Stiftung des amerikanischen Multimillionärs Landon T. Clay mit einer Million Dollar belohnt.
Bevor man anfängt nachzudenken, sollte man sich den Artikel Mathematics With a Moral zu Gemüte führen.
Robert Osserman hat sich angeschaut, wie das mit der Problemlösung zum Großen Fermatschen Satz war (Andrew Wiles) und wie der gegenwärtige Stand zum Beweis der Poincareschen Vermutung ist (Grigori Perelman).
Nicht ganz überraschend kommt dabei heraus: Bei der Lösung solcher Probleme muss man sich auf schwierige Umwege einstellen und die Million Dollar wird man schließlich teilen müssen.

The moral of the story? There are at least two. First, a curious fact of mathematical life: When faced with a problem that seems intractable, the best strategy is sometimes to formulate what appears to be an even harder problem. By expanding one's horizons, one may find an unanticipated route that leads to the goal.

Second, mathematicians are often thought of as working in isolation, and that is occasionally the case, as with Andrew Wiles and his solitary struggle to prove Fermat's Last Theorem. But usually mathematics is a highly social activity, with collaboration between two or more individuals the rule rather than the exception.