Riemann Hypothesis The Fine Structure

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Riemann hypothesis,
the fine structure
constant, and the Todd
function
Posted on 24 September 2018 by John
This morning Sir Michael Atiyah gave a presentation at the Heidelberg

Laureate Forum with a claimed proof of the Riemann hypothesis. The
Riemann hypothesis (RH) is the most famous open problem in
mathematics, and yet Atiyah claims to have a simple proof.
https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2018/09/24/riemann-hypothesis-the-fine-structure-c... 27/09/2018
Simple proofs of famous

conjectures
If anyone else claimed a simple proof of RH they’d immediately be
dismissed as a crank. In fact, many people have sent me simple proofs of
RH just in the last few days in response to my blog post, and I imagine
they’re all cranks [1]. But Atiyah is not a crank. He won the Fields Medal in
1966 and the Abel prize in 2004. In other words, he was in the top echelon
of mathematicians 50 years ago and has kept going from there. There
has been speculation that although Atiyah is not a crank, he has gotten
less careful with age. (He’s 89 years old.)
QuinteScience, source of the image above, quoted Atiyah as saying
Solve the Riemann hypothesis and you’ll become famous.

But if you’re already famous, you run the risk of becoming
infamous.
If Atiyah had a simple self-contained proof of RH that would be too much

to believe. Famous conjectures that have been open for 150 years don’t
have simple self-contained proofs. It’s logically possible, but practically

speaking it’s safe to assume that the space of possible simple proofs has
been very thoroughly explored by now.
But Atiyah’s claimed proof is not self-contained. It’s really a corollary,

though I haven’t seen anyone else calling it that. He is claiming that a
proof of RH follows easily from his work on the Todd function, which
hasn’t been published. If his proof is correct, the hard work is elsewhere.
Andrew Wiles’ proof of Fermat’s last theorem was also a corollary. He

proved a special case of the Taniyama–Shimura conjecture, and at end of
a series of lectures noted, almost as an afterthought, that his work
implied a proof to Fermat’s last theorem. Experts realized this was where
he was going before he said it. Atiyah has chosen the opposite approach,
presenting his corollary first.
Connections with physics

Atiyah has spoken about connections between mathematics and physics
for years. Maybe he was alluding to his work on the the fine structure
constant which he claims yields RH as a corollary. And he is not the only
person talking about connections between the Riemann hypothesis
specifically and physics. For example, there was a paper in Physical
Review Letters last year by Bender, Brody, and Müller stating a possible
connection. I don’t know whether this is related to Atiyah’s work.
Fine structure constant

The fine structure constant is a dimensionless physical constant α, given
by
where e is the elementary charge, ħ is the reduced Planck constant,

and c is the speed of light in a vacuum. Its value is roughly 1/137.
The Todd function

The Todd function T is a function introduced by Atiyah, named after his
teacher J. A. Todd. We don’t know much about this function, except that
it is key to Atiyah’s proof. Atiyah says the details are to be found in his
manuscript The Fine Structure Constant which has been submitted to
the Proceedings of the Royal Society.
Atiyah says that his manuscript shows that on the critical line of the
Riemann zeta function, the line with real part 1/2, the Todd function has a
limit ж and that the fine structure constant α is exactly 1/ж. That is,
limy → ∞ T(1/2 + yi) = ж = 1/α.
Now I don’t know what he means by proving that a physical constant has
an exact mathematical value; the fine structure constant is something
that is empirically measured. Perhaps he means that in some
mathematical model of physics, the fine structure constant has a precise
mathematical value, and that value is the limit of his Todd function.
Or maybe it’s something like Koide’s coincidence where a mathematical

constant is within the error tolerance of a physical constant, an
interesting but not necessarily important observation.
Taking risks
Michael Atiyah is taking a big risk. I’ve seen lots of criticism of Atiyah
online. As far as I know, none of the critics have a Fields Medal or Abel
Prize in their closet.
Atiyah’s proof is probably wrong, just because proofs of big theorems are
usually wrong. Andrew Wiles’ proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem had a flaw
that took a year to patch. We don’t know who Atiyah has shown his work
to. If he hasn’t shown it to anyone, then it is almost certainly flawed:
nobody does flawless work alone. Maybe his proof has a patchable flaw.
Maybe it is flawed beyond repair, but contains interesting ideas worth

pursuing further.
The worst case scenario is that Atiyah’s work on the fine structure
constant and the Todd function is full of holes. He has made other big
claims in the last few years that didn’t work out. Some say he should quit
doing mathematics because he has made big mistakes.
I’ve made big mistakes too, and I’m not quitting. I make mistakes doing
far less ambitious work than trying to prove the Riemann hypothesis. I
doubt I’ll ever produce anything as deep as a plausible but flawed proof
of the Riemann hypothesis.
Update
The longer paper has been leaked, presumably without permission from
Atiyah or the Royal Society, and it doesn’t seem to hold up.
In writing this post I wanted to encourage people to give Atiyah a

chance, to wait until more was known before assuming the proof wasn’t
good. I respect Atiyah as a mathematician and as a person—I read some
of his work in college and I’ve had the privilege of meeting him on a
couple occasions—and I hoped that he had a proof even though I was
skeptical. I think no less of him for attempting a to prove a big theorem. I
hope that I’m swinging for the fences in my ninth decade.
Related posts
• Interview with Michael Atiyah
• News regarding ABC and RH
• Creativity and criticism
[1] I don’t call someone a crank just because they’re wrong. My idea of a
crank is someone without experience in an area, who thinks he has
found a simple solution to a famous problem, and who believes there is a
conspiracy to suppress his work. Cranks are not just wrong, they can’t
conceive that they might be wrong.
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17 thoughts on “Riemann
hypothesis, the fine structure
constant, and the Todd
function”
A Reader
24 September 2018 at 10:33
Here is a copy of his “The Fine Structure Constant” paper

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WPsVhtBQmdgQl25_evlGQ
1mmTQE0Ww4a/view
Paragraph 3.4 seems to define the Todd function.
Pablo Sebastian Armas

Sorry for this,
I don’t mean to be disrespectful to anyone. I do not

understand in what part of the proof any property of the
zeta function is used.
Pablo
John
Pablo, I understand. The zeta function is not explicit in his

HLF talk. And somewhere the proof of a conjecture about
the zeta function has to mention the zeta function! I don’t
know where the connection is, but I haven’t read the fine
structure paper.
JS
It’s not in the fine structure paper. This is not a “plausible

but flawed attempt” because it is not plausible.
Atiyah has showed the manuscript to other well-regarded
mathematicians, who told him not to publish or give talks
about it. He told them they were wrong. Just like the paper
on complex structures on the 6-sphere. His paper was

rejected from the arXiv, and he believes that this is because
of ageism. Atiyah’s exceptional work has been on
differential geometry and algebraic topology; he has done
no previous work in analytic number theory.
Unfortunately, this fits all of your criteria for crankery.
John
I’m sorry to hear that. I was starting to fear that might be

the case based on the conspicuous silence from experts.
Their silence says more (and is more respectful) than the
Twitter snipers criticisms.
Jim Simons
The fine structure constant is defined as a ratio involving 4

fundamental physical quantities. So I guess what it would
mean for it to have a precisely definable mathematical
value is that there are really only three fundamental
physical quantities here.
Luis Mendo
The best comment / critique I have read on Atiyah’s

purported proof. Judicious, prudent, and (unlike many
others) respectful to the great Atiyah
Nick
Is the fine structure constant directly measurable? I believe

that the constituent quantities like c e and hbar are
measured and the uncertainties propagated. Since the fine
structure is dimensionless people have held out hope that
it might pop out of a convergent series and give clues
towards a deeper version of QFT; for instance this is given
as a hw problem in Griffith’s QM book (with the warning to
not spend too much time on it). An added benefit of such
an expression would be that it could lower the uncertainty
of the most uncertain constituent of the expression. It
doesn’t appear that Atiyah has succeeded, but this form of
numerology is indeed popular and potentially useful.
Simon Plouffe
Hello,
the f.s constant is a dimension less constant it is a pure
mathematical number, it is not related to units like meter
or second or joule. He could be right about it.
Hugo Pereira
I don’t understand this method and maybe somebody can

help me with this.
As I understand, the proof is about applying the Todd
function to the zeta function. The question is, If you apply
the Todd function to the prime zeta function or even any
Dirichlet series then you also can prove that any of those
functions have no zeros in the right half critical strip.
Right?! The problem is that those functions have zeros on
that strip.
Simon Plouffe
The problem is that (so far), there are no known description

of the Todd function in details , it could also be a lucky
coincidence, the F.s. constant is known to only 10 digits.
The exact value is not known because the speed of light
has been fixed to be a certain number (299 792 458 meters
per second) by decree. This means that after the 10’th digit
is pure speculation.
But at the same time, Mr Atiyah is not exactly an amateur.
The Todd function , from what I have read is only similar to
the Zeta function and certainly does not behave as the
Zeta with zeroes on the critical strip. If you look in the
standard litterature about the R.H. there are many
equivalent formulations. If the breakthrough of Mr Atiyah is
true then there are many consequences in regards physics
as well as mathematics, I would be very interested to read
the article on the connection of the Zeta function, the Todd
function and the F.S. constant.
If true , in my opinion it is a major event, connecting
number theory to physics directly .
Craig Buchek
Isn’t in a real sense an empirical physical constant? We

might view it differently now, but when it was first
discovered, it was very much just something empirical. And
it seems to be based on the real geometry of our universe;
other universes (with different geometries/curvature) could
have different values for .
John
It’s a ratio of empirically measured constants. It’s possible

that these constants are not independent, that there’s one
less degree of freedom than is apparently the case. It’s also
possible that this is just a coincidence. The details are
sketchy to say the least.
Daniel Lakeland
Looking very briefly at this, it seems to me the critical step

is that when applying the Todd function to the Zeta
function to get the F function, Atiya claims that within the
critical strip the new function should have the property F
(2s) = 2F(s) because of convexity of the region, so this
should require some properties of the Todd and Zeta
functions within convex regions. This may also apply to
other functions than the zeta function when composed

with the Todd function…
He also says because F(s) is analytic at zero (a property of

the Todd function and the Zeta function composed) that
together with the above property, if it’s zero at another
point in this strip (off the line) then it must be zero at all
points in the strip. I don’t quite follow this. There are
nonzero analytic functions with more than one zero, but
I’m guessing within a strip they don’t have the F(2s) = 2F(s)
property. It’s been too long since I thought about complex
analysis to know whether those two properties imply
identically zero.
The real question is what is the special property of the Todd

function that allows you to compose it with the Zeta
function and get a new function with certain properties
above? This is where special properties of the zeta function
come in (or perhaps more likely a class of functions of
which the zeta function is a member).
Nathan Hannon
Is there at least some computational evidence that the

Todd function approaches (or at least seems to approach)
1/alpha? If so, this may be interesting in itself even if the RH
proof turns out to be fatally flawed.
Robert Matthews
If Atiyah has been led astray by the siren call of derivations

of the fine structure constant, he’s in the illustrious
company of Eddington (see
https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1510/1510.04046.pdf) and
Pauli
(https://physicsworld.com/a/dreams-of-a-quantum-
pioneer/).
adam j ginensky
“Andrew Wiles’ proof of Fermat’s last theorem was also a

corollary. He proved a special case of the Taniyama
–Shimura conjecture, and at end of a series of lectures
noted, almost as an afterthought, that his work implied a
proof to Fermat’s last theorem. ”
I don’t think that is a fair statement. The fact that
Taniyama-Weil implied FLT was the result of a lot of
fantastic work by a number of mathematicians starting
with Frey’s insight that FLT was connected to elliptic curves
and including major contributions by Serre and Ribet. Just
my opinion.
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Riemann hypothesis, fine structure constant, Todd function Página 1 de 16

This morning Sir Michael Atiyah gave a presentation at the Heidelberg

Simple proofs of famous

QuinteScience, source of the image above, quoted Atiyah as saying

Solve the Riemann hypothesis and you’ll become famous.

If Atiyah had a simple self-contained proof of RH that would be too much

have simple self-contained proofs. It’s logically possible, but practically

But Atiyah’s claimed proof is not self-contained. It’s really a corollary,

Andrew Wiles’ proof of Fermat’s last theorem was also a corollary. He

Connections with physics

Fine structure constant

where e is the elementary charge, ħ is the reduced Planck constant,

The Todd function

limy → ∞ T(1/2 + yi) = ж = 1/α.

Or maybe it’s something like Koide’s coincidence where a mathematical

Maybe it is flawed beyond repair, but contains interesting ideas worth

In writing this post I wanted to encourage people to give Atiyah a

Tags : Number theory

Bookmark the permalink

Here is a copy of his “The Fine Structure Constant” paper

Paragraph 3.4 seems to define the Todd function.

Pablo Sebastian Armas

Sorry for this,

I don’t mean to be disrespectful to anyone. I do not

Pablo, I understand. The zeta function is not explicit in his

It’s not in the fine structure paper. This is not a “plausible

on complex structures on the 6-sphere. His paper was

Unfortunately, this fits all of your criteria for crankery.

I’m sorry to hear that. I was starting to fear that might be

The fine structure constant is defined as a ratio involving 4

The best comment / critique I have read on Atiyah’s

Is the fine structure constant directly measurable? I believe

25 September 2018 at 04:53

I don’t understand this method and maybe somebody can

The problem is that (so far), there are no known description

Isn’t in a real sense an empirical physical constant? We

It’s a ratio of empirically measured constants. It’s possible

Looking very briefly at this, it seems to me the critical step

other functions than the zeta function when composed

He also says because F(s) is analytic at zero (a property of

The real question is what is the special property of the Todd

Is there at least some computational evidence that the

If Atiyah has been led astray by the siren call of derivations

“Andrew Wiles’ proof of Fermat’s last theorem was also a

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail

John D. Cook, PhD, President

My colleagues and I have decades of consulting experience

Let’s talk. We look forward to exploring the opportunity to help

Your company's project ...

Subscribe via email

Subscribe via RSS

© All rights reserved.

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