How Search Algorithms Are Changing the Course of Mathematics - Issue 70: Variables

Mathematicians long wondered whether it's possible to express the number 33 as the sum of three cubes--that is, whether the equation 33 x³ y³ z³ has a solution. They knew that 29 could be written as 3³ 1³ 1³, for instance, whereas 32 is not expressible as the sum of three integers each raised to the third power. But the case of 33 went unsolved for 64 years. Booker found this odd trio of 16-digit integers by devising a new search algorithm to sift them out of quadrillions of possibilities. The algorithm ran on a university supercomputer for three weeks straight.