Chinese doctor stuns maths world by cracking decades-old problem using ChatGPT
Jin Shanmu, a Beijing-based neurosurgeon, was trying to solve a problem related to brain ultrasounds. Instead, he made mathematical history
When Beijing-based neurosurgeon Jin Shanmu pulled up a chair at his computer, he was not looking to make mathematical history. He was simply trying to crack a problem related to brain ultrasounds.
Jin, a postdoctoral researcher and resident at the Peking Union Medical College Hospital, managed to prove Crouzeix’s conjecture, a problem in numerical linear algebra.
His tool? A 16-hour autonomous run on GPT-5.6-Sol, operating on the ChatGPT Work platform.
Proposed by French mathematician Michel Crouzeix, the conjecture posits that the norm of applying any function to a matrix is no larger than twice the function’s maximum value on that matrix’s numerical range.
While abstract, it has long been an intriguing problem in matrix analysis – a field Jin stumbled into while undertaking research on transcranial ultrasounds.
The breakthrough came to light when Cornell University mathematician Alex Townsend and University of Washington professor Anne Greenbaum published an account on Tuesday detailing their email correspondence with the Chinese doctor.