MathOverflow will be down for maintenance for approximately 3 hours, starting Monday evening (06/24/2013) at approximately 9:00 PM Eastern time (UTC-4).
show/hide this revision's text 4 added 1 characters in body; edited tags

I think we all secretly hope that in the long run mathematics becomes easier, in that with advances of perspective, today's difficult results will seem easier to future mathematicians. If I were cryogenically frozen today, and thawed out in one hundred years, I would like to believe that by 2110 the Langlands program would be reduced to a 10-page pamphlet (with complete proofs) that I could read over breakfast.

Is this belief plausible? Are there results from a hundred years ago that have not appreciably simplified over the years? From the point of view of a modern mathematician, what is the hardest theorem proven a hundred years ago (or so)?

The hardest theorem I can think of is the Riemann Mapping Theorem, which was first proposed by Riemann in 1852 and (according to Wikipedia) first rigorously proven by Caratheodory in 1912. Are there harder ones?

show/hide this revision's text 3 deleted 1 characters in body

I think we all secretly hope that in the long run mathematics becomes easier, in that with advances of perspective today's difficult results will seem easier to future mathematicians. If I were cryogenically frozen today, and thawed out in one hundred years, I would like to believe that by 2110 the Langland's Langlands program would be reduced to a 10-page pamphlet (with complete proofs) that I could read over breakfast.

Is this belief plausible? Are there results from a hundred years ago that have not appreciably simplified over the years? From the point of view of a modern mathematician, what is the hardest theorem proven a hundred years ago (or so)?

The hardest theorem I can think of is the Riemann Mapping Theorem, which was first proposed by Riemann in 1852 and (according to Wikipedia) first rigorously proven by Caratheodory in 1912. Are there harder ones?

show/hide this revision's text 2 changed year

I think we all secretly hope that in the long run mathematics becomes easier, in that with advances of perspective today's difficult results will seem easier to future mathematicians. If I were cryogenically frozen today, and thawed out in one hundred years, I would like to believe that by 2010 2110 the Langland's program would be reduced to a 10-page pamphlet (with complete proofs) that I could read over breakfast.

Is this belief plausible? Are there results from a hundred years ago that have not appreciably simplified over the years? From the point of view of a modern mathematician, what is the hardest theorem proven a hundred years ago (or so)?

The hardest theorem I can think of is the Riemann Mapping Theorem, which was first proposed by Riemann in 1852 and (according to Wikipedia) first rigorously proven by Caratheodory in 1912. Are there harder ones?

show/hide this revision's text 1 [made Community Wiki]