2003/05/01 by Thomas C. Hales
Mathematics · #math.MG #msc:52C17
published as Proceedings of the ICM, Beijing 2002, vol. 3, 795--804
arxiv created 2003/05/01 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30
The Kepler conjecture asserts that the density of a packing of congruent balls in three dimensions is never greater than π/√(18). A computer assisted verification confirmed this conjecture in 1998. This article gives a historical introduction to the problem. It describes the procedure that converts this problem into an optimization problem in a finite number of variables and the strategies used to solve this optimization problem.