Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer Conjecture

Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture, in mathematics, the conjecture that an elliptic curve (a type of cubic curve, or algebraic curve of order 3, confined to a region known as a torus) has either an infinite number of rational points (solutions) or a finite number of rational points, according to whether an associated function is equal to zero or not equal to zero, respectively. In the early 1960s in England, British mathematicians Bryan Birch and Peter Swinnerton-Dyer used the EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator) computer at the University of Cambridge to do numerical investigations of elliptic curves. Based on these numerical results, they made their famous conjecture.

In 2000 the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture was designated a Millennium Problem, one of seven mathematical problems selected by the Clay Mathematics Institute of Cambridge, Mass., U.S., for a special award. The solution for each Millennium Problem is worth $1 million.