Shortest

In 2004, John Con­approach and Alexan­der Soifer, each work­ing on math­e­mat­ics at Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty, sub­mit­ted to the Amer­i­can Math­e­mat­i­cal Month­ly what they believed was “a brand new world report within the num­ber of phrases in a [math] paper.” Soifer explains: “On April 28, 2004 … I sub­mit­ted our paper that includ­ed simply two phrases, ‘n2 + 2 can’ and our two draw­ings….