Other disciplines should take heed.

Having answers to longstanding questions is an advance for humanity, says the writer.

“Sometimes people have the wrong idea of maths and think that it will be overtaken by computers,” said the mathematician Alain Connes in 2000.

He was describing why a team of esteemed mathematicians were offering US$1 million rewards for solutions to seven intractable mathematical conundrums. These Millennium Prize problems, said Connes, “are totally inaccessible to computers”.