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Erdős problem 707

Erdős conjectured, in over a dozen papers spanning 1976 to 1997 and with a 1000 dollars prize attached, that every finite Sidon set extends to a perfect difference set modulo p2+p+1p^2+p+1 for some prime pp. Alexeev and Mixon establish that {1,2,4,8}\{1,2,4,8\} is a counterexample - and discovered along the way that Marshall Hall, Jr. had published a different counterexample three decades before Erdős first posed the problem, unnoticed by the community for half a century.

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FormalConjectures/ErdosProblems/

707.lean

Retained formal statement1 of 11

Erdős Problem 707: It is false that any finite Sidon set can be embedded in a perfect different set modulo some nn.

As described in [arxiv/2510.19804], a counterexample is provided in [Ha47], see below. The proof of this has been formalized.

This was formalized in Lean by Alexeev using ChatGPT.

FormalConjectures/ErdosProblems/707.leanErdos707.erdos_7071 lineExact file
(∀ (A : Set ℕ), A.FiniteIsSidon A → ∃ B, ∃ n > 0, ABIsPerfectDifferenceSet B n) ↔ False
SolvedProof has a holelean4external proof

The proof uses `sorry`: part of the argument is written but not proved. Lean accepts the file; it does not accept the theorem.

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