From NFL to MIT: Ex-Ravens Star John Urschel Solves Decades-Old Math Mystery After Quitting Football

In August 2015, John Urschel, then a player for the Baltimore Ravens , suffered a severe concussion , but continued playing. However, two years later, the Canadian chose to leave American football after learning about the consequences of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease that affects many former players of this and other sports due to the blows sustained during games.

Urschel then decided to focus on his mathematics studies at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which he had begun while playing in the NFL . Now, with a doctorate, he teaches the subject in the same classrooms where he studied.

But his name gained prominence in the academic world after publishing a few days ago an article titled "On the growth factor of random matrices," in which the Canadian explains how he has found the solution to a mathematical problem that had remained unsolved since the 1990s, when algorithms arrived.

That algorithm, known as Gaussian elimination, had successfully produced solutions in millions of practical applications, but for mathematicians that is not enough, since they must determine whether methods or concepts work in all possible cases. Urschel mathematically proved the exact conditions that guarantee that reliability.

“It's very interesting that we don't fully understand the most important algorithm we have in this field,” Urschel told the "Washington Post." “I love this question of why versus how, and this idea of understanding what is happening.”