A Korean mathematician claims to have come up with a proof for a thorny problem dating back more than 50 years.

Seoul National University Professor Kang Hyeon-bae says he can prove a conjecture made by renowned British scientist John Eshelby in 1957.

Eshelby had shown in a landmark paper that if an elliptical or ellipsoidal-shaped inclusion, or a measurable part inside an infinite object, contains a uniform elastic loading, then the field inside the inclusion is also uniform. He also conjectured that the converse would be true.

Working with University of Utah Professor Graeme Milton, Kang said in a recent paper that he could prove Eshelby's conjecture - that if the field inside an inclusion is uniform for all uniform loadings, then the shape of the inclusion must be elliptical or ellipsoidal.

Their findings were published in the latest issue of the Archive of Rational Mechanics and Analysis.

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