The Millennium Problems
In 2000, the Clay Mathematics Institute established a prize of one million dollars for each of seven Millennium Problems, as an indication of their central importance in current mathematical research. This followed a tradition established in 1900 by David Hilbert, who formalized a list of 23 open problems that then motivated influential research programs in mathematics over the subsequent century.
Millennium Problems Course
In partnership with the Duke Number Theory RTG grant DMS-2231514, Duke Math is hosting a series of topics courses, accessible to both advanced undergraduate mathematics students and graduate students, to bring students into close interaction, early in their careers, with these famous open problems, as well as further open problems in number theory. Each celebrated problem is rigorously described in a 9-lecture series (open to undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs, and faculty), in parallel with the development of extended lecture notes.
Recent offerings on the Millennium Problems
The Riemann Hypothesis, Prof. Lillian B. Pierce (2025, 2026)
The Navier-Stokes Equation, Prof. Tarek Elgindi (2025)
The Hodge Conjecture, Prof. Colleen Robles (2025)
The Birch–Swinnerton-Dyer Conjecture, Prof. Samit Dasgupta (2026)
Further Open Problems Courses
Langlands Functoriality, Prof. Jayce Getz (2026)
