2014 MacArthur “Genius” grant winner and the twin prime conjecture

From http://www.macfound.org/fellows/927/:

Prime numbers have inspired great intrigue over the last centuries, and one of the most basic unanswered questions has been the spacing between two consecutive prime numbers, or the twin prime conjecture, which states that there are infinitely many pairs of primes that differ by two. Despite many efforts at proving this conjecture, mathematicians were not able to rule out the possibility that the gaps between primes continue to expand, eventually exceeding any particular bound. Zhang’s work shows that there are infinitely many consecutive primes, or pairs of primes, closer than 70 million. In other words, as you go to larger and larger numbers, the primes will not become further and further apart—you will keep finding prime pairs that differ by less than 70 million.

His work has generated significant collaborations across the community to expand on his effort, and within months of his discovery that number was reduced from 70 million to less than 5,000.