Abc Conjecture

High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The abc conjecture (also known as Oesterle-Masser conjecture) is a conjecture in number theory, first proposed by Joseph Oesterlé and David Masser in 1985. The conjecture is stated in terms of three positive integers, a, b and c (whence comes the name), which have no common factor and satisfy a + b = c. If d denotes the product of the distinct prime factors of abc, the conjecture essentially states that d is rarely much smaller than c. Although there is no obvious strategy for resolving the problem, it has already become well known for the number of interesting consequences it entails. Dorian M. Goldfeld described the abc conjecture as "the most important unsolved problem in Diophantine analysis".