Thanks to Charles Freudenthal and Roberta Beary for bringing this episode to my attention.

For those who may not know, let me briefly mention that Goldbach's Conjecture is a very old empirical observation regarding prime and even numbers, namely that every even number greater than two appears to be a sum of two prime numbers. That is, any time this has been checked for a given number it has been found to be true. However, as of my writing this in 2009 nobody has figured out either how to prove that it is always the case or found a counter-example. This is of mathematical interest largely because it sounds as if it should be easy to prove or disprove, but clearly it is quite difficult!

Spoiler Alert: I have not yet been able to see this episode, but following is what I've been able to piece together from what I've heard and read.

Apparently, the murderer was the math professor who was the winner of a Fields Medal for his work on Golbach's Conjecture. He killed the student because she had found a flaw in his work. (This wiki says "The math tutor [i.e. professor -ak] murdered Regan because she found a solution that would prove his mathematical theory wrong.")

That motive seems unlikely to me. If there really is a counter-example to the professor's "theory" then it is wrong and killing the discoverer would achieve little. In fact, if one person found it would it not be likely that another person would soon also? I appreciate that, as the title implies, the murderer was motivated by fear that his reputation would be damaged, but I have trouble believing that an actual mathematician would react so violently and personally when the real issue would not be this one person and her counter-example so much as the undeniable fact that he was wrong.

Anyway, I should reserve judgement until I see the episode for myself. However, if you have seen the episode (or would just like to voice your prejudices as I have), please write to share your thoughts.