The understanding of the distribution of prime numbers has been one of the most important problems in mathematics for centuries.

James Maynard became one of the field medallists this year, with discoveries regarding the gaps between very large primes (1, 2, 3).

In this interview, he says that the Riemann Hypothesis is always in the back of his mind, and he would be very keen to break through this very hard riddle. Other than that, also the Twin Prime Conjecture and the Goldbach Conjecture are fascinating from his point of view.

I tried to dig around the hard concepts behind the work of Maynard, and I feel quite lost. I’d take this as a good thing, for the moment. What strikes me is that such hard problems need a completely different approach to making progress.

Although I would like to be part of it, Maynard also states that there also is a need for people doing some grunt work to help advance maths. In any case I’ll try do to my best.