Gleb Ebert
Stephen RoyleI love this sort of article. Mathematicians' progress on "The Lonely Runner" problem (not really about running).
Proved for 4 runners in the 70s. They got to 7 by 2007.
"last year, Matthieu Rosenfeld [...] settled the conjecture for 8 runners. And within a few weeks, a second-year undergraduate at the University of Oxford named Tanupat (Paul) Trakulthongchai built on Rosenfeld’s ideas to prove it for 9 and 10 runners."
2nd year undergrad. Within a few weeks. Boom!
New Strides Made on Deceptively Simple ‘Lonely Runner’ Problem | Quanta Magazine
A straightforward conjecture about runners moving around a track turns out to be equivalent to many complex mathematical questions. Three new proofs mark the first significant progress on the problem in decades.