On Riemann Hypothesis: The Nigerian Professor False Claim and Evidences of Academic Fraud

The internet was literally broken down. Only Kim Kardashian, notorious for her butt show, or Zahra Buhari –that heavenly-sculptured and rendered daughter of our president; Muhammadu Buhari –can rival Dr. Enoch Opeyemi Oluwole’s recent internet implosion.  I got the hot news from Vanguard.

“The 156 years old Riemann Hypothesis, the most important problem in Mathematics has been successfully solved by Nigeria Scholar, Dr Opeyemi Enoch. With this breakthrough, Dr Enoch, who teaches at the Federal University, Oye Ekiti (FUOYE), has become the fourth egghead to resolve one of the seven Millennium Problems in Mathematics. The Kogi State-born mathematician had, before now, worked on mathematical models and structures for generating electricity from sound, thunder and Oceanic bodies.”

Now, tell me: Who will not be excited, as a Nigerian, that a century and half old mathematical problem have been solved by his co-national? I was like you, I was excited, but I approached it with caution for many reasons I will later highlight. I then read through the Vanguard news for further information.

“A statement in Ado Ekiti yesterday said Dr Enoch presentation of the Proof on November 11, 2015 during the International Conference on Mathematics and Computer Science in Vienna, Austria becomes more symbolic coming on the exact day and month 156 years after the problem was delivered by a German Mathematician in 1859.”

A screen shot of the conference web page (URL: http://computer.conference-site.com/index.html)

I dismissed the “exact day and month 156 years after the problem was delivered” part which makes it more like a prophetic coming of a Pastor of Mathematics. As a scholar and a computer scientist, I am interested both in the fact (of the Dr. Enoch’s solution) and in the truth (of his claim). I started searching and clicking. First, I want to read more about what Riemann hypothesis is, and then, I want to read the paper published by the said Mathematics “genius”. These are what I got after the whole searching and clicking. 

Screenshot of Clay Mathematics Institute (CMI) explanation of Riemann Hypothesis (URL: http://www.claymath.org/millennium-problems/riemann-hypothesis). The Institute is the sponsor of the prizes to successful solver(s) of any of the Millennium problems. In short, this institute would be giving Dr. Enoch the sum $1 million if he solved the problem.

 

Screen shot of the abstract of the paper published by Dr. Enoch in ICMCS 2015. This is the paper that was falsely claimed to be the solution to the Riemann hypothesis

There is a disparity between what the unsolved Riemann hypothesis is “all interesting solutions of the equation ζ(s) = 0; i.e. a proof that   ζ(s) = 1 + 1/2^s + 1/3^s + 1/4^s + ... =0” and what Dr. Enoch published “meromorphic functions which have the same results as the Riemann zeta function… By this The Riemann Zeta function and its Analytic Continuation function are transformed into their Matrices equivalents... and through the use of Sobolev Space theorem, an optimization problem with a variable coefficient is derived. Some methods of solution are presented.”

Going by what is published which would have naturally undergone peer review, Dr. Enoch did not claim to have solved Riemann hypothesis. It is simply an application of the Riemann Zeta Function for optimization problem. As an example, if it takes 5 mins for a message (you can read data) sent from a mobile phone A to get delivered to mobile phone B, any computational work done to reduce the time taken from 5 mins (even if it is to 4.8mins) has optimized the message transfer and delivery process. That is an example of what optimization is.

At this point, my next reaction would have been a complete dismiss and neglect of the Vanguard News’ claim –a symbolic representation of what is wrong with Nigerian journalism – if not for subsequent international media attention and credence given to this false claim. Check BBC and Telegraph.
The analysis of the interview with BBC and my further investigation suggested Dr. Enoch is possibly an academic fraudster. 

 

These are the (circumstantial) evidences of the accusation of academic fraud:

None of his claims “investigated and then established the claims of Riemann. He went on to consider and to correct the misconceptions that were communicated by Mathematicians in the past generations”, are available in the published work.

None of the claimed previously published works “ a Prototype of a silo for peasant farmers and also discovered a scientific technique for detecting and tracking someone on an evil mission…has succeeded in inventing methods by which oil pipelines can be protected from vandalism”, as published by Vanguard, is available on his Academia profile. 

The most shocking part is: There are eleven (11) articles in his profile on Academic.Edu. None is his work. Seven (7) of the articles which can be downloaded are not authored by him. Good enough, he did not change the names of the author. Three (3) have no materials, and one (1) is just a list of what he called his publications.

I have the screenshot here. 

 Why would someone with such “earth-shattering scholarly records” fail to publish them and upload same on his profile, but instead uploaded works authored by others? Your answer will win “Who wants to be a Millionaire.”

During the build-up of this blog post, I was tagged similar rebuttals to Dr. Enoch’s false claims. You have it on Quora, Aperiodical, The Herald, and CNN.

Have you read about Phillip Emeagwali? He must be a mentor to Enoch Opeyemi. 

This story of "our Mathematics genius" has proved, again, the worth of Nigeria-minted PhD degrees. 

Read: On the Troubling Question of the worth of Nigeria degrees