# A Harvard mathematician and an AI model may have cracked an 87-year-old math problem

_Tuesday, July 21, 2026 at 8:00 AM EDT · AI · Latest · Tier 2 — Notable_

![A Harvard mathematician and an AI model may have cracked an 87-year-old math problem — Primary](https://fortune.com/img-assets/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/GettyImages-80357061-e1784649929615.jpg?resize=1200,600)

An AI model resolved the Jacobian conjecture, a problem that had remained unsolved since 1939, on Sunday afternoon.

Kevin Buzzard said the result was verified by the time he woke up in London the next morning and was being discussed by his peers at Imperial College London's pure mathematics department by lunch. Levant Alpöge, an Anthropic employee, announced the result on X, where the post has drawn more than 20 million views.

Buzzard told Fortune it is a big day and a great time to be alive. The AI model's result met the Jacobian determinant at every point in space, holding steady at −2, yet mapping three different starting points to the same destination, meaning it did not pass the test.

Buzzard described the result as very exciting and noted it demonstrates the potential of language models to eventually reach the supermathematician level. Akhil Mathew, a University of Chicago mathematician credited by Alpöge for suggesting the problem, said one can check the result is correct but it would be nice to tell a story explaining why.

Alpöge did not respond to Fortune's request for comment.

## Sources

- [fortune.com](https://fortune.com/2026/07/21/ai-solves-jacobian-conjecture-levant-alpoge-claude-fable-5/)

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