Photo/Illutration Shinichi Mochizuki at his office at Kyoto University’s Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences (Provided by Kyoto University)

A Japanese entrepreneur is offering to shell out $1 million (140 million yen) to anyone who can finally resolve a deadlock over a proof of a math brainteaser.

Nobuo Kawakami, the founder of Dwango Co., which operates the video-sharing website Nico Nico Douga, held a news conference July 7 to explain the reward would go to the person who publishes a peer-reviewed article in a scholarly journal either pointing out an error or providing backing for the “Inter-universal Teichmuller (IUT) Theory” by Shinichi Mochizuki, a professor at Kyoto University’s Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences (RIMS).

Mochizuki, 54, claimed his theory constituted a proof for the ABC Conjecture.

Mochizuki worked alone for 20 years to put together the IUT Theory, but it took more than seven years before an international journal published his article in spring 2021 as the proof for the ABC Conjecture.

Mochizuki’s work was so complicated that it continues to defy even the most brilliant minds.

Only about 20 mathematicians around the world support Mochizuki’s theory. One of them is Ivan Fesenko, a math professor at the University of Warwick in Britain, who hailed Mochizuki’s work as a breakthrough math tool.

Other prominent mathematicians have called for Mochizuki to rewrite his work to make it understandable to a wider range of experts.

Some experts jointly published an article pointing to a serious gap in Mochizuki’s published article that calls into question its accuracy as a proof.

Kawakami, who will consult with a mathematician before handing out the reward, said he just wanted to put an end to the stalemate over whether the IUT Theory was correct.

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