In a small article near the back of the paper was a story about a British publishing company that was offering a one million dollar prize for anyone who could mathematically prove a thing called Goldbach’s Conjecture. I had never heard of Goldbach’s conjecture.

     Christian Goldbach was an 18th century Prussian mathematician. In 1742 he stated his conjecture to other mathematicians of the time. His conjecture is: "Every even number after the number 2 is the sum of two prime numbers." No one has ever proven this to be true, however, most mathematicians believe that it is true.

     It’s pretty easy to think of two prime numbers for even numbers that are not too large. For those who don’t do math, an even number is any number that can be evenly divided by the number 2. A prime number is any number that cannot be evenly divided by any other number except for itself and the number 1. 24 is 7+17. 26 is 7+19. 28 is 11+17. 30 is 13+17. At the time of this writing, mathematicians using computers have shown Goldbach’s conjecture to be true up to the number 400,000,000,000,000. The question is whether or not it’s true for every even number on the number line, which is infinity.

     I figured that the publishing company never actually intended to award the million dollars. They said that only a highly skilled mathematician could ever produce a proof that would pass review. The proof had to be published in a major mathematical journal. There was a two year dead line for claiming the prize. I guess if no one could solve it in more than 250 years, it was a pretty safe bet.

     I finished the Sunday paper and went and helped my brother. By 6:00p.m. I was heading back to Spokane. It is a five hour drive and I wanted to be back in time to see the eleven o’clock news, so I could see the aerial views of the Kingdome implosion.

     On the drive back, I thought about the Goldbach’s conjecture story. What was the mysterious reason why no one could solve it? Just a few days before this, I had watched a John Stossel report on television about the search for the ‘missing matter.’ I thought about all the stuff I had been taught in school about warped space and matter and energy being the same thing. With all the thousands of brilliant scientists and their unlimited taxpayer supported budgets, why can’t these mysteries ever be solved? They were looking for the missing matter when I was in high school. Now I’m helping to pay for the search. So are all taxpayers, whether they want to or not.

     When I got home, I had been up for 24 hours straight, and I had to work the next morning. I fell asleep as soon as I laid down. At 6:00a.m. I woke up like a shot had gone off. It would take me more than 20 years to make a million dollars repairing electric signs, and they were giving away a million dollars for solving a math puzzle. I woke up because I knew the solution.

     I went straight to my desk and grabbed a piece of paper and a calculator. Within five minutes, I was looking at mathematical proof that Goldbach’s conjecture is false. There are even numbers that can only be the sum of any even number of primes. The proof was simple. Any highschool algebra student should be able to understand it.

     I spent a week preparing a proof to submit to the major mathematical publications. 32 months later I received a rejection response from one of them. There was no reason given for the rejection. I did not know this at the time, but if you submit an un-solicited writing for publication, and you are not already famous, they don’t even read it, they just throw it away.