During the two years from 1878 to 1880, Kemp and Taylor, two famous lawyers and mathematicians, respectively submitted papers to prove the four-color conjecture and announced that they had proved the four-color theorem.
But later mathematician Hurwood pointed out that Kemp's proof and his own accurate calculation were wrong. Soon, Taylor's proof was also denied. As a result, people began to realize that this seemingly simple topic is actually a difficult problem comparable to Fermat's conjecture.
The relationship between topology and graph theory;
The famous "four-color problem" is also related to the development of topology. The four-color problem, also known as the four-color conjecture, is one of the three major mathematical problems in the modern world.
The four-color conjecture was put forward by Britain. 1852, when Francis guthrie, who graduated from London University, came to a scientific research unit to do map coloring, he found an interesting phenomenon: "It seems that every map can be colored with four colors, so countries with the same border will be colored with different colors."
1872, Kelly, the most famous mathematician in Britain at that time, formally put forward this question to the London Mathematical Society, so the four-color conjecture became a concern of the world mathematical community. Many first-class mathematicians in the world have participated in the great battle of four-color conjecture.