The “alien language” of mathematics that only 20 people understand: self-taught young genius revolutionizes Fermat’s Last Theorem

While there are thousands of mathematicians in the world, only 20 of them have managed to begin to understand one of mathematics’ most cryptic extraterrestrial-like theories. Known as the Inter-universal Teichmüller Theory (IUT), it was introduced a little over a decade ago by Japanese mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki as proof of the famous ABC conjecture.

The 2,000-page framework is considered so unintelligible and impenetrable for most mathematicians that it has been dubbed the “alien’s language.” However, a 28-year-old who dropped out of his doctoral program to work as a tech engineer has made a breakthrough that could make it into a practical tool.

Dropout revolutionizes Fermat’s Last Theorem

Zhou Zhongpeng until recently was working as an algorithm engineer at Huawei in Beijing. He picked up the job after leaving his PhD program in 2023 before completion. That was because he was assigned graph theory, but his true passion was number theory.

After 12–14-hour shifts, as well as on weekends, he would go home and work on IUT. Over the course of five months, he devised refinements and new applications of the theory which he submitted in a detailed paper to Mochizuki and Ivan Fesenko, a leading IUT authority at Westlake University in Hangzhou, China.

Fesenko told him to come immediately to meet with him and is now mentoring Zhou. The young genius’ work using IUT proves the majority of cases of generalized Fermat’s Last Theorem.

The nearly 400-year-old theorem was first solved by mathematician Andrew Wiles in 1995. However, his proof is 130 pages long, Zhou’s proof takes just one. “His results are infinitely stronger than Wiles’s,” declared Professor Ivan Fesenko.

Making math easier and opening new ideas but still more work to do

His work holds the potential to “change the way people think about mathematics itself, making hard problems easier to solve and opening up new ideas,” says Rupendra Brahambhatt at Interesting Engineering. “Moreover, it could lead to the development of new tools for things like cryptography, quantum computing, and physics, helping us better understand patterns, symmetry, and even space and time,” he adds.

While Zhou’s work is a significant breakthrough in the understanding of IUT, he recognizes that his work is built on the shoulders of others. “[My] papers are based on the research of predecessors; my work has only made some minor innovations and explorations,” he posted on social media.

“And I hope to contribute a modest amount to the relevant field,” Zhou added. There is still much work to be done as it will most likely take years to fully comprehend IUT’s alien’s language, if ever.

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