Research notes on every problem, and a library of the papers behind them. Built from the open erdos repository.
Updated
Claim. The answer to Problem 1010 is yes: for , every -vertex graph with edges has at least triangles. The claimants are L. Lovász and M. Simonovits, and the result has two postings. The first is On the number of complete subgraphs of a graph, Proc. Fifth British Combinatorial Conference (Aberdeen 1975), Congressus Numerantium XV (1976), 431--441, which is not held (the second author's page copy was unavailable on 2026-09-18, and Crossref has no record); its year gives this page's date, the day not being recorded. The second is On the number of complete subgraphs of a graph II, Studies in Pure Mathematics: To the Memory of Paul Turán, Birkhäuser (1983), 459--495, described on its card (no file is held) and read on the page images of the scan the card names. The chapter's abstract (p. 459) says that its results "contain the proof of the longstanding conjecture of P. Erdős that a graph with edges contains at least triangles if ", and its p. 460 attributes the triangle case to the 1976 paper ("For the proof of this was given in [5]").
The theorem behind the sentence is Theorem 4 (p. 463), in the corpus's words: let be the number of edges of the Turán graph plus , with ; then among the graphs with vertices and edges, one with the fewest copies of is the Turán graph with edges added inside a largest class (for the only one, for one of them). At the added edges lie inside one side of a complete bipartite graph, each lies in one triangle with every vertex of the other side, and the added edges form no triangle, so this graph has exactly triangles (a one-line count made on the problem page, not in the chapter), which is the bound asked for. Two qualifications travel with the theorem: the chapter fixes and and takes large relative to them (p. 461), and the derivation of Theorem 4 from Theorem 3 (p. 463) uses the step "if is sufficiently large" without a threshold, so the printed statement carries an unstated largeness assumption. Erdős's own paper of 1962 proves the bound for (Theorem; an accepted partial claim, 1962_03_01_erdos) and records Rademacher's case for even ; the chapter's Theorem A restates Erdős's theorem.
Depends on. Nothing in this wiki; the chapter's own statements and the one-line triangle count are the whole argument.
Acceptance. The reviewed evidence is documented acceptance by the
site's curator, Thomas Bloom, who labels the problem PROVED and names the
1976 paper as one of its two independent proofs, with the community
database in agreement (it lists the problem as proved as of its last
update, 10 September 2025), and the publication of the general theorem in
an edited memorial volume by Birkhäuser in 1983 (Crossref record). No
referee record is visible for a volume chapter and the proceedings paper is
not held, so refereed is not listed. The one comment in the site's thread
(8 March 2026) holds that the problem was settled in the 1983 chapter
rather than in the 1976 paper; the chapter's own attribution says
otherwise, and without the 1976 text the point stays open. Read depth: the
abstract, Theorem A, Problem 3 and Theorems 1 to 4 were read at their
statements; the derivation of Theorem 4 from Theorem 3 was read for
structure; the proof of Theorem 3 (Section 5, pp. 471--495) was not read,
and nothing is independently reviewed. The site also credits an independent
proof by
Nikiforov and Khadzhiivanov,
whose text has not been seen. An independent Lean proof of the statement
for every , with no largeness assumption, is a pending claim of its own
(2026_08_26_alexeev).