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I'm a science/math journalist [ger] and currently I'm working on an article about prize money for open problems (Millennium Prize Problems and such). One section will be about the history of prize money and rewards. While I know about the culture of betting and rewards for open problems in the Lwow school and Erdös' faible for betting and rewarding, I wonder if there is a reliable source on the history of such rewards. In particular I'm interested in the question since when have money rewards for open problems started being a thing in mathematics and what some of the historic examples for such rewards are.

Thank you for helping me out :-)

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    $\begingroup$ The King of Sweden (Oscar II) put a bounty on finding an analytic solution for the three-body problem. This makes for quite an interesting story. $\endgroup$ Sep 14, 2022 at 10:36
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    $\begingroup$ Consider asking on the History of Science and Mathematics Stack Exchange: hsm.stackexchange.com $\endgroup$
    – aorq
    Sep 14, 2022 at 12:55
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    $\begingroup$ One of the most famous such rewards was the Wolfskehl Prize. $\endgroup$ Sep 14, 2022 at 23:02
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    $\begingroup$ for pointers to some of the older mathematical contests (many of which included a monetary prize), see mathoverflow.net/questions/242178/… $\endgroup$ Sep 15, 2022 at 6:17
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    $\begingroup$ @GerryMyerson Germanism for “soft spot”. $\endgroup$ Sep 15, 2022 at 8:05

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Here is a long list of Mathematics awards and many of them have a prize money too (you can click on each of them in order to read more and find winners data).
Another couple of important prizes to mention (without taking into account the Clay Mathematics Institute prize of $1,000,000$ USD for each of the well-known Millennium Problems) are the $1,000,000$ USD cash prize for the first person able to prove the Beal Conjecture, the $120,000,000$ JPY (i.e., more than $1,000,000$ USD) for the first mathematician who will solve the Collatz conjecture (see Prize for the Collatz conjecture). Lastly, it is worth to mention the $2,000$ USD prize (plus a bottle of champagne) waiting for the first solver of each of the problems listed on this page: 2,000 USD prizes.

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