Meet Andrew Beal: "A Man With A Mission"

The Beal Conjecture is now worth $100,000.

wrote:
"THE BEAL CONJECTURE
- How smart is Andrew Beal? Smart enough to
astonish some of the smartest people on earth."
http://dmagazine.com/magazine/bdfeature02008.shtml

: Two years ago, Beal stunned the rarefied realm
: of academic mathematicians by coming up with
: something none of them had thought of-a
: numerical puzzle that has since been dubbed the
: Beal Conjecture.

: He worked on the problem himself, then threw it
: out for the world to ponder, offering a prize to
: whoever can come up with a proof. Beal recently
: added 25,000 additional incentives to the
: original $50,000 award.

: The American Mathematical Society, which
: administers the award, receives about 20 calls
: each month about the proof.

: Mauldin says a solution to the Beal Conjecture
: could have further applications in cryptology.

"THE $75,000 QUESTION"
http://dmagazine.com/magazine/bdfeature02009.shtml

The Beal Conjecture and Prize
www.math.unt.edu/~mauldin/beal.html

Quite an interesting fellow, I hope to meet him
some day - working for him would be even better.


"Man With a Mission"
Dallas Magazine Business Section Profile of
Andrew Beal
http://dmagazine.com/magazine/bdfeature0200.shtml

: The founder of Beal Bank is seriously rich and
: seriously smart. Now he's serious about shooting
: for the stars.

: For the past five years, the bank has averaged a
: net income of $50 million on assets of
: $1.3 billion. He owns 99 percent of it.

: In 1997, using his bank's computers, he started
: looking into a problem closely tied to Fermat's
: famous Last Theorem. When he announced the
: problem's existence, it became known in the
: tight-knit world of theoretical mathematics as
: the Beal Conjecture.

: Although he has no background in aerospace,
: aviation, engineering, or any science, Beal is
: building a rocket in the Frisco plant he
: constructed and maintains without a penny of
: outside investment.

http://dmagazine.com/magazine/bdfeature02002.shtml

: I think of it as attributing a different level
: of risk to a problem than the rest of the world
: attributes to it. I'm not that much of a risk
: taker. I just take situations that people
: perceive to be high risk, and I decide that they
: can be managed to low risk. I'm really very
: conservative."

: He's invested tens of millions of his own
: dollars in an as-yet-untested product. It is
: being developed by a two-year-old company with
: no chance of making a profit for at least two
: more years. He's entered an embryonic
: commercial aerospace industry, which is capital
: intensive and highly competitive.

: "I thought it was a reasoned decision and
: continue to believe it's a reasoned decision. It
: can be managed to very acceptable risk."

http://dmagazine.com/magazine/bdfeature02003.shtml

: Beal's enthusiasm surrounds him like a force
: field from a science fiction novel.

: Even more than his money, Beal's vision and his
: enthusiasm propel Beal Aerospace.

: Can a Texas millionaire with no college degree
: and a background in real estate and banking do
: what Beal plans to do: become the premier
: private commercial launch company in the world
: by designing and building a rocket for sending
: commercial payloads into space at a (relatively)
: low cost?

http://dmagazine.com/magazine/bdfeature02004.shtml

: When the hydrogen peroxide oxidizes, it ignites
: the kerosene, so Beal is able to eliminate the
: cost of developing and producing an ignition
: system for his rocket. An environment-friendly
: fringe benefit is that hydrogen peroxide breaks
: down into hydrogen and water.

: It's not the first time Beal has altered his
: plans for Beal Aero-space. Originally, he
: envisioned starting a satellite company. In 1995
: he was presiding over a very profitable bank
: when he read an article about the growing
: satellite business. As a self-described space
: buff, he was intrigued. But the process and cost
: of getting a satellite into orbit was daunting.

: The ember of an idea sparked by that solitary
: magazine article flashed into the blaze that
: doesn't drive Beal so much as lures him, entices
: him-and, by proxy, kindles enthusiasm in those
: around him.

: Beal started a two-year course of independent
: research-he read books, toured aerospace
: facilities, consulted with engineers, observed
: launches-that culminated in the founding of Beal
: Aerospace in 1997. It is the third business he
: has started in the Dallas area, and Beal says it
: will be his last.

http://dmagazine.com/magazine/bdfeature02005.shtml

: The middle child of an engineer and a state
: government employee, the Lansing native was an
: entrepreneur from the get-go.

: "If everybody else is going broke, that simply
: means your competition is going away." Houghton
: calls his friend "the consummate contrarian."

: Though Beal declines (politely, but firmly) to
: talk about Beal Aerospace's finances, he will
: say he is financing the company himself from his
: "fairly substantial resources."

http://dmagazine.com/magazine/bdfeature02006.shtml

: Beal Aerospace is not the only firm attempting
: to capitalize on the heavenly commercial launch
: market. The FAA is in licensing talks with more
: than a dozen companies, including Beal. But the
: Frisco start-up is one of only a few that is
: being taken seriously by the industry.

: Some reported rocket rivals are struggling for
: funding, hoping to score business development
: aid from the federal or a state government.
: Others rely on funds from investors who may have
: high demands for return on investment and a low
: tolerance for long-term risk. Beal does not have
: to worry about his funding being yanked.

http://dmagazine.com/magazine/bdfeature02007.shtml

: "In 10 years or so, the demand for re-usable
: rockets is what's going to make the market
: explode.

: Beal actually has a rocket that has been
: test-fired. Many of his competitors have only
: their dreams and some high-tech drawings.

: When Andy Beal turns those laser-beam eyes on
: you and tells you: one, it's a mathematical
: certainty that an asteroid will hit the earth
: one day; two, all life will be extinguished;
: three, the only way to save mankind is to
: colonize other planets; and four, he finds it
: fulfilling to think that Beal Aerospace might
: play some tiny part in making that happen-well,
: you believe him.

: "I don't lose sleep over that because it could
: be a billion years or hundreds of millions of
: years or tens of millions of years away," he
: says. "But the fact is it could be 20 years
: away. And to the extent that our efforts speed
: up the colonizing of other planets-you just
: never know all the implications of efforts like
: this.... So all the knowledge, all the answers to
: questions that we don't even know to ask-all
: that will be furthered by what we're doing. And
: I like that."

: Last June the organizers of WorldSat '99 Space &
: Satellite Finance Conference asked him to be a
: speaker at the event. ("These are Wall Street
: money people," notes Caceres. "They don't ask
: just anyone to speak at this thing.") According
: to several accounts, Beal was a hit with the
: insider crowd of industry analysts, Wall Street
: financiers, and aerospace executives.

: Most importantly, though, Beal has vision and
: the passion to pursue it.

: The smart money-that is, Beal's own money, and
: lots of it-says he's going to pull this off.

"THE BEAL CONJECTURE
- How smart is Andrew Beal? Smart enough to
astonish some of the smartest people on earth."
http://dmagazine.com/magazine/bdfeature02008.shtml

: Two years ago, Beal stunned the rarefied realm
: of academic mathematicians by coming up with
: something none of them had thought of-a
: numerical puzzle that has since been dubbed the
: Beal Conjecture.

: He worked on the problem himself, then threw it
: out for the world to ponder, offering a prize to
: whoever can come up with a proof. Beal recently
: added 25,000 additional incentives to the
: original $50,000 award.

: The American Mathematical Society, which
: administers the award, receives about 20 calls
: each month about the proof.

: Mauldin says a solution to the Beal Conjecture
: could have further applications in cryptology.

"THE $75,000 QUESTION"
http://dmagazine.com/magazine/bdfeature02009.shtml

The Beal Conjecture and Prize
www.math.unt.edu/~mauldin/beal.html

Quite an interesting fellow, I hope to meet him
some day - working for him would be even better.

Mark Reiff


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Before you buy.

Is "Andy Beal" some sort of anagram for "Elon Musk"?