Aubrey de Grey improves solution for HadwigerNelson problem

Aubrey de Grey present a family of finite unit-distance graphs in the plane that are not 4-colorable, thereby improving the lower bound of the HadwigerNelson problem. The smallest such graph that we have so far discovered has 15671585 vertices.

Scott Aaronson has been following the work and confirms that it has been independently validated.

This is the first significant progress on the Hadwiger-Nelson problem since 1950. The Hadwiger-Nelson problem asks: what’s the minimum number of colors that you need to color the Euclidean plane, in order to ensure that every two points at distance exactly 1 from each other are colored differently?

Aubrey de Grey is best known for his work promoting and advancing anti-aging research. Aubrey leads the SENS Research Foundation. Aubrey previously worked in the field of Artificial Intelligence.

He is currently the Chief Science Officer of the SENS Research Foundation and VP of New Technology Discovery at AgeX Therapeutics, Inc. He is editor-in-chief of the academic journal Rejuvenation Research, author of The Mitochondrial Free Radical Theory of Aging (1999) and co-author of Ending Aging (2007). He is known for his view that medical technology may enable human beings alive today to live indefinitely.

De Grey’s research focuses on whether regenerative medicine can prevent the aging process. He works on the development of what he calls “Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence” (SENS), a collection of proposed techniques to rejuvenate the human body and stop aging. To this end, he has identified seven types of molecular and cellular damage caused by essential metabolic processes. SENS is a proposed panel of therapies designed to repair this damage.

De Grey is an international adjunct professor of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America, the American Aging Association, and the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. He has been interviewed in recent years in a number of news sources, including CBS 60 Minutes, the BBC, The New York Times, Fortune Magazine, The Washington Post, TED, Popular Science, The Colbert Report, Time and the Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe. He is also a member of Flooved advisory board.