Resolution of Erd\H{o}s Problem #728: a writeup of Aristotle's Lean proof
Abstract
We provide a writeup of a resolution of Erd\H{o}s Problem #728; this is the first Erd\H{o}s problem (a problem proposed by Paul Erd\H{o}s which has been collected in the Erd\H{o}s Problems website) regarded as fully resolved autonomously by an AI system. The system in question is a combination of GPT-5.2 Pro by OpenAI and Aristotle by Harmonic, operated by Kevin Barreto. The final result of the system is a formal proof written in Lean, which we translate to informal mathematics in the present writeup for wider accessibility. The proved result is as follows. We show a logarithmic-gap phenomenon regarding factorial divisibility: For any constants and there exist infinitely many triples with such that The argument reduces this to a binomial divisibility and studies it prime-by-prime. By Kummer's theorem, translates into a carry count for doubling in base . We then employ a counting argument to find, in each scale , an integer whose base- expansions simultaneously force many carries when doubling , for every prime , while avoiding the rare event that one of is divisible by an unusually high power of . These "carry-rich but spike-free" choices of force the needed -adic inequalities and the divisibility. The overall strategy is similar to results regarding divisors of studied earlier by Erd\H{o}s and by Pomerance.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2601.07421,
title = {Resolution of Erd\H{o}s Problem #728: a writeup of Aristotle's Lean proof},
author = {Nat Sothanaphan},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.07421},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
20 pages, 1 figure