Hasnain says:

Amazing human interest story that happens to touch upon math.

"Huh’s inadvertent proof of Read’s conjecture, and the way he combined singularity theory with graphs, could be seen as a product of his naïve approach to mathematics. He learned the subject mainly on his own and through informal study with Hironaka. People who have observed his rise over the last few years imagine that this experience left him less beholden to conventional wisdom about what kinds of mathematical approaches are worth trying. “If you look at mathematics as a kind of continent divided into countries, I think in June’s case nobody really told him there were all these borders. He’s definitely not constrained by any demarcations,” said Robbert Dijkgraaf, the director of IAS.

Soon after he posted his proof of Read’s conjecture, the University of Michigan invited Huh to give a talk on his result. On December 3, 2010, he addressed a room full of many of the same mathematicians who had rejected his graduate school application a year earlier"

Posted on 2017-07-07T16:48:07+0000