If one grossly divides mathematics into two parts they would be: tools for measuring and tools for recognition.
To use an analogy, tools for measuring are the technologies for collecting data about an object, the process of “taking a blurry photograph”. Tools for recognition deal with the following: if you are given a pile of data or a blurry photograph, how can the object that it came from be recognised from the data?
The Hodge Conjecture – a major unsolved problem in algebraic geometry – deals with recognition.
William Vallance Douglas Hodge was a professor at Cambridge who, in the 1940s, worked on developing a refined version of cohomology – tools for measuring flow and flux across boundaries of surfaces (for example, fluid flow across membranes).
The classical versions of cohomology are used for the understanding of the flow and dispersion of electricity and magnetism (for example, Maxwell’s equations, which describe how electric charges and currents act as origins for electric and magnetic fields). These were refined by Hodge in what is now called the “Hodge decomposition of cohomology”.
Hodge recognised that the actual measurements of flow across regions always contribute to a particular part of the Hodge decomposition, known as the (p,p) part. He conjectured that any time the data displays a contribution to the (p,p) part of the Hodge decomposition, the measurements could have come from a realistic scenario of a system of flux and change across a region.
Or, to put this as an analogy, one could say Hodge found a criterion to test for fraudulent data.
If Hodge’s test comes back positive, you can be sure the data is fraudulent. The question in the Hodge conjecture is whether there is any fraudulent data which Hodge’s test will not detect. So far, Hodge’s test seems to work.
But we haven’t understood well enough why it works, and so the possibility is open that there could be a way to circumvent Hodge’s security scheme.
Hodge made his conjecture in 1950, and many of the leaders in the development of geometry have worked on this basic recognition problem. The problem itself has stimulated many other refined techniques for measuring flow, flux and dispersion.
Tate’s 1963 conjecture is another similar recognition question coming out of another measurement technique, the l-adic cohomology developed by Alexander Grothendieck.
The strongest evidence in favour of the Hodge conjecture is a 1995 result of Cattani, Deligne & Kaplan which studies how the Hodge decomposition behaves as a region mutates.
Classical cohomology measurements are not affected by small mutations, but the Hodge decomposition does register mutations. The study of the Hodge decomposition across mutations provides great insight into the patterns in data that must occur in true measurements.
In the 1960s, Grothendieck initiated a powerful theory generalising the usual concept of “region” to include “virtual regions” (the theory of motives on which one could measure “virtual temperatures” and “virtual magnetic fields”.
In a vague sense, the theory of motives is trying to attack the problem by trying to think like a hacker. The “Standard Conjectures” of Grothendieck are far-reaching generalisations of the Hodge conjecture, which try to explain which virtual regions are indistinguishable from realistic scenarios.
The question in the Hodge conjecture has stimulated the development of revolutionary tools and techniques for measurement and analysis of data across regions. These tools have been, and continue to be, fundamental for modern development.
Imagine trying to building a mobile phone without an understanding of how to measure, analyse and control electricity and magnetism. Alternatively, imagine trying to sustain an environment without a way to measure, analyse and detect the spread of toxins across regions and in waterways.
Of course, the tantalising intrigue around recognition and detection problems makes them thrilling. Great minds are drawn in and produce great advances in an effort to understand what makes it all work.
One might, very reasonably, claim that the longer the Hodge conjecture remains an unsolved problem the more good it will do for humanity, driving more and more refined techniques for measurement and analysis and stimulating the development of better and better methods for recognition of objects from the data.
The Clay Mathematics Institute was wise in pinpointing the Hodge conjecture as a problem that has the capacity to stimulate extensive development of new methods and technologies and including it as one of the Millennium problems.
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*Credit for article given to Arun Ram*