SMRTR Science & EngineeringJul 19, 2026Lobsters

Mathematicians still don’t know the fastest way to multiply numbers

SMRTR summary

Mathematicians long believed multiplying large numbers couldn't be done faster than O(n²) steps, until a 23-year-old student disproved that in 1960 using a clever algebraic trick. In 2019, a new algorithm pushed efficiency to O(n log n), but proving this is the absolute speed limit remains unsolved.

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