The Seven Millennium Problems and the Riemann Hypothesis

At the turn of the new millennium the Clay Institute in Boston had a small group of eminent mathematicians propose what they thought would be the seven most important mathematical questions for the 21st century. The prize for solving any of these questions would be one million dollars. In this talk we will describe the seven problems, one of which (the Poincare' Conjecture) is already solved. The oldest and most famous problem on the list is the Riemann Hypothesis, and most of the talk will be a discussion of this problem and its importance. It was first suggested by Georg Bernhard Riemann in 1859. We shall describe the problem in simple terms and talk about some of the progress that has been and is still being made towards a solution.