Jordanian research team solves open mathematical problems

AMMAN — Rushdi Khalil, professor of mathematics at the University of Jordan (UJ), has led a research team to resolve two long-standing mathematical challenges, including one of the world’s most famous unsolved problems since 1948.

Khalil's team, which includes Mamoun Abu Hammad and Wasim Shanti from Al Zaytoonah University and Abdul Rahman Youssef from the American University of Sharjah, made a significant breakthrough by solving the problem of "Every Uniquely Remotal Set in a Hilbert Space is a Singleton." 

The solution also provided insights into another prominent problem that had puzzled mathematicians since 1950, according to the Jordan News Agency, Petra. 

The team's groundbreaking findings were published in the European Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics.

In a statement by the UJ, Khalil reflected on his enduring commitment to solving these mathematical puzzles, noting that he has published over 83 research papers in the process. 

He credited the university's supportive research environment for fostering innovation and enabling major academic achievements like this one.

The research team has also recently solved the "Invariant Subspace Problem for Separable Hilbert Spaces," a challenge that had remained unsolved for nearly 80 years. 

These accomplishments mean the team has now solved three of the four most famous open problems in mathematics, according to Petra. 

Khalil’s work on the "conformable fractional derivative" has also become a widely adopted concept in the field, with applications ranging from optics and fractals to quantum mechanics.