Mathematician Noga Alon: AI solved an Erdős conjecture that had gone unsolved for years, and I am delighted

I met Noga Alon in the interview room of the 2026 World Laureates Forum (hereinafter referred to as the "WLF"). Sitting in the chair, Alon had his hair combed back, with deep-set brow ridges and eye sockets, and his expression reminded one of the classic photograph of "father of the atomic bomb" Robert Oppenheimer. The schedule was tight. Worried that we had waited long, he skipped rest, drank a cup of coffee, and quickly adjusted himself. As soon as he spoke and smiled, the distance between us instantly shrank. Because he is very tall, when talking face to face he habitually bends down; when listening to a question, he leans slightly forward; when it is his turn to answer, he speaks slowly, revealing the gentleness and intellect peculiar to mathematicians. One question was very detailed and asked in a very soft voice, yet he did not miss it. Noga Alon the mathematician, when not smiling, looks somewhat like the classic photograph of Robert Oppenheimer. Photo by Jin Liwang. Noga Alon, 70, is an Israeli combinatorial mathematician and a professor at Princeton University. This is his second time attending the WLF. He is even more familiar with the layout of the venue than the interpreter accompanying him, who is attending for the first time. He has solved thirty or forty "Erdős problems"—a collection of problems containing more than a thousand mathematical conjectures, which has stirred the fighting spirit of many mathematicians. Alon admitted frankly, "Most of the time I live with failure, but that does not stop me from doing my utmost." His tone was relaxed. A prodigy in his youth: a mathematical flash at a family gathering at age 12. Alon is very low-key, fitting the traditional image people have of scientists—plainly dressed, humble, rigorous and restrained in expression. His growth trajectory was almost like "cheat mode" all the way. As a child, he already showed mathematical talent. At seven or eight, he fell in love with solving puzzles; the interlocking logical reasoning and definite answers in puzzles fascinated him deeply. At a family gathering when he was 12, he won an argument for his mother. The family was watching the Eurovision Song Contest and playing a game of predicting the rankings. Before the contest, everyone guessed the rankings of the countries; after the contest, they calculated the difference between the predicted and actual rankings—the smaller the sum of the differences, the more accurate the guess. But everyone was puzzled to find that, no matter the result, this total difference was always an even number. Alon's mother suspected that some rule must lie behind it. An engineer present thought it was merely a coincidence. The two held to their own views, and the mother called over little Alon, who loved mathematics. Alon quickly found the answer: if some countries were guessed too high, then other countries must have been guessed too low. The total amount of upward and downward shifts in ranking is exactly equal; adding the two together naturally gives an even number. The engineer listened in surprise to the explanation and accepted the reasoning of this 12-year-old child. Noga Alon chatted with the Dajiangdong-Fudan Converged Media Innovation Studio; humor, wisdom and gentleness were the immediate impressions he gave. Photo by Wu Jing. Alon naturally embarked on the path of mathematical research. In 2022, he won the Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences. Two years later, he won the Wolf Prize in Mathematics. These two international awards are direct recognition of Alon's decades-long mathematical career. Yet in Alon's view, the charm of mathematics lies not in winning awards, but in its irrefutable persuasiveness. Arguments in reality usually involve each side holding to its own view; but in mathematics it is different: "Truth is truth, and it will always hold." The underlying tone of research: "Most of the time I am failing, but every day I am happy." Behind the "cheat mode" lie countless "failures" and trial and error. When asked about the greatest difficulty he has encountered on the path of research, Alon fell into a long meditation. "Actually, most of the time I am living with failure," he said calmly. "Facing a difficult problem, the vast majority of my attempts do not find the final answer. Research should be like this. If everything went smoothly everywhere, it would instead show that the topic you chose lacks real value." His most recent "failure" was related to an Erdős problem. In his final year of high school, Alon met Paul Erdős, a mathematician who published more than 1,500 papers in his lifetime and was even more famous for proposing a vast number of highly difficult conjectures—over the decades, Alon solved thirty or forty of them, but there was one conjecture that he and his colleagues thought about repeatedly for many years and still could not crack. Then AI (artificial intelligence) entered the scene and "easily" solved several century-old problems, including this one. In the process of derivation and proof, AI even drew on and adjusted some conclusions from Alon's earlier papers. "Do you feel frustrated about this?" we asked. "Quite the opposite, I am happy every day!" Alon replied. "The fact that my research results can be used for reference by other scholars, and even by AI, itself shows their value." Receiving the little bear and the book Approaching World Laureates presented by the Dajiangdong-Fudan Converged Media Innovation Studio, Alon was very happy; he said he would give the little bear to his granddaughter. Photo by Bai Shuyu. He began to change, learning to use AI tools, while also shifting his goals to problems that AI has not yet cracked. "These problems are more meaningful and also more interesting to me. But I use AI more restrainedly than my students do. My habit is to first think through the problem independently, and then see what help AI can provide." Alon said, "What really matters is not getting the ideal result every time, but that after repeated setbacks in attempt after attempt, you still know where to go next." "'Happy every day'—he was not just saying it," the accompanying interpreter told us. "When alone, he likes to hum softly; this kind of happiness from the heart easily infects the people around him." Beyond formulas: a gentle mathematician with young people in his heart. Setting aside the identity of mathematician, Noga Alon is vivid and lively. In the authorship of one paper, Alon used the name of his 5-year-old daughter Nilli. "At that time I had not yet made up my mind whether to continue this research."Alon scratched his head, and so 5-year-old Nilli became the youngest paper "author" in history, leaving behind a special family memory. There is also an amusing photo: he is holding the half-year-old child of mathematician He Xiaoyu, and with a completely serious face he lectures the swaddled infant on the probabilistic method, as if it were a matter of great importance. In the eyes of young scholars, this professor who plays with children is also willing to spend time treating them seriously. Computer science scholar Xie Ning once wrote to Alon about a combinatorics problem that had troubled him for several weeks. A few days later, Alon replied with a completely different approach to the problem, and the originally thorny issue suddenly had a way forward. The paper the two later co-authored originated from this email. "He can always spot connections between different areas of mathematics, and he is especially willing to give his time to young researchers," Xie Ning said. Alon has high hopes for young scholars: "Young researchers are like newborn calves that do not fear tigers; as long as they dare to try, they are more likely to find answers that their predecessors never discovered." "Professor, you really are so gentle!" we could not help praising him. "Oh! If my wife were here right now, she might have a different assessment." The remark set off a burst of laughter. After the interview ended, Noga Alon happily posed for a group photo with the interview team and staff. Photo by Zhang Siyuan. On the other side of the ocean, a mathematics craze brought about by Wang Hong has occurred in China, and Alon is also paying attention and is sincerely happy about it. Hearing that Wang Hong loves playing table tennis, he joked with a smile: "I probably do not play as well as she does." When it came to the increased public attention to mathematics, his tone became serious: "This is a good thing. The future of Chinese mathematics is something to look forward to." At the end of the interview, we hoped he would describe himself in three words. Unlike the string of adjectives we had expected, Alon blurted out: "Try my best!" We all laughed—exactly three words, yet they succinctly summed up Alon's attitude toward life.