attempted it as his project suggested it as an interesting topic recalls mr kayal adds mr saxena most of our classmates did projects in networking and operating systems but neeraj and i have always been fascinated by numbers and had even participated in the maths olympiadsprofessor manindra agarwal who had a number of important results to his name and had been working on this problem for some time agreed to act as their supervisor and the winning team was in placemr kayal and mr saxena recall that prime numbers consumed their waking hours but the solution remained elusive the academic year wound down and the duo graduated instead of going home to guwahati and allahabad respectively they remained on campus with their professor we kept working but it was only on july 14 that we realised how close we were to an answer says mr saxena how did we celebrate the three of us went to the canteen and had coffeethat celebratory coffee was the first of many on the day the paper was put up on the net 30000 people downloaded it by the end of the week the tally had gone up to 200000 i didnt know there were so many mathematicians in the world exclaimed the surprised iit webmaster who had been monitoring the online actioniit kanpur held a press conference and director sanjay dhande exulted that this will be listed among the greatest achievements in the history of the iits mr agarwal he stated should qualify for the worlds top honours in mathematicsaround the world universities conducted impromptu seminars based on the paper but the ultimate accolades came from the towering figures in the world of mathematics congratulations very elegant wrote hendrik lenstra a leading mathematician at berkeley added carl pomerance of bell labs its a beautiful paperwhen did the two youngsters share the great news with their parents we didnt tell them chuckles mr saxena the new york times didmeanwhile the agarwalkayalsaxena team is likely to stay in place for the next few years rather than heading to the us like so many of their classmates mr kayal and mr saxena have returned to iit kanpur to do phds what you need for research is a good atmosphere and a great supervisor says mr saxena weve already got both so why look elsewhere