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Oftentimes in math the manner in which a solution to a problem is announced becomes a significant chapter/part of the lore associated with the problem, almost being remembered more than the manner in which the problem was solved. I think that most mathematicians as a whole, even upon solving major open problems, are an extremely humble lot. But as an outsider I appreciate the understated manner in which some results are dropped.

The very recent example that inspired this question:

• Andrew Booker's recent solution to $a^3+b^3+c^3=33$ with $(a,b,c)inmathbb{Z}^3$ as $$(a,b,c)=(8866128975287528,-8778405442862239,-2736111468807040)$$ was publicized on Tim Browning's homepage. However the homepage has merely a single, austere line, and does not even indicate that this is/was a semi-famous open problem. Nor was there any indication that the cubes actually sum to $33$, apparently leaving it as an exercise for the reader.

Other examples that come to mind include:

• In 1976 after Appel and Hakken had proved the Four Color Theorem, Appel wrote on the University of Illinois' math department blackboard "Modulo careful checking, it appears that four colors suffice." The statement "Four Colors Suffice" was used as the stamp for the University of Illinois at least around 1976.


• In 1697 Newton famously offered an "anonymous solution" to the Royal Society to the Brachistochrone problem that took him a mere evening/sleepless night to resolve. I think the story is noteworthy also because Johanne Bernoulli is said "recognized the lion by his claw."


• As close to a literal "mic-drop" as I can think of, after noting in his 1993 lectures that Fermat's Last Theorem was a mere corollary of the work presented, Andrew Wiles famously ended his lecture by stating "I think I'll stop here."

What are other noteworthy examples of such announcements in math that are, in some sense, memorable for being understated? Say to an outsider in the field?

Watson and Crick's famous ending of their DNA paper, "It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material," has a bit of the same understated feel...

The best known lower bound for the minimal length of superpermutations was originally posted anonymously to 4chan.

The story is told at Mystery Math Whiz and Novelist Advance Permutation Problem, and a publication with a cleaned-up version of the proof is at A lower bound on the length of the shortest superpattern, with "Anonymous 4chan Poster" as the first author. The original 4chan source is archived here.

I consider this manner as a mark of a professional mathematician: let others convey the excitement of a discovery. A good recent example was the submission of a paper on bounded gaps between primes. Much of the public excitement was generated by people other than the author, Yitang Zhang.

Gerhard "Can Be Excited In Private" Paseman, 2019.03.10.

Applications of algebra to a problem in topology (YouTube) at Atiyah80 was a talk by Mike Hopkins. In it he announced the solution to the Kervaire invariant one problem in all but one dimension (arXiv, Annals).

Perelman solving the Poincare "conjecture," posting it only on the arXiv, leaving math, and refusing the Clay prize could be interpreted as a kind of "mic drop."

Not math but in physics the statistical interpretation of the wave-function was announced by Max Born in a footnote.

From his paper Zur Quantenmechanik der Stoßvorgänge,

(1) Anmerkung bei der Korrektur: Genauere Überlegung zeigt, daß die
Wahrscheinlichkeit dem Quadrat der Größe $Phi_{n_tau m}$ proportional ist.

This can be translated as

(1) Addition in proof: More careful consideration shows that the probability is proportional to the square
of the quantity $Phi_{n_tau m}.$

Because of its implications this is probably the most important footnote in the history of physics. Max Born was awarded the Nobel prize "for his fundamental research in quantum mechanics, especially for his statistical interpretation of the wavefunction".