My guest today Ken Ono is a mathematics professor at the University of Virginia,

but what makes him unusual is how we apply math outside of academia.

His math knowledge got him the job of associate producer for a major Hollywood motion picture.

And more recently, he's been helping swimmers to make the Olympic podium.

How do you optimally streamline your body so that the force you generate

propels you through the water as efficiently as possible?

That's a math problem. And it's a math problem with many different

parts.

Welcome to people I mostly admire with Steve Levitt.

On a day-to-day basis, Ken Studies highly abstract mathematical topics you've probably never heard of, like integer partitions and modular forms.

I want to start the conversation by seeing if he can explain some of his crazy theorems in an accessible way. I'm also curious how someone who thinks in such

an abstract way defines math.

So can't So Ken, one result that you've proven and to an outsider I have to say it's a

strange result. You've proven that every odd number greater than 2,719 can be written in the form

X squared plus Y squared plus 10 Z squared for some

integers X YZ. It is a very weird theorem. It actually is a theorem that is dependent on what's called the

Riemann hypothesis, which is one of the million dollar Clay Millennium Prize problems.

It's a polynomial in XY, Y, Z. You know how to plug in numbers for X, Y, Z, and you can get larger and

larger numbers. What our theorem says, if for any odd

odd number bigger than 2, 319,

then the Riemann hypothesis would be false.

And you'd get a million dollars.

...