Sorry, It's an important distinction in an absolute sense, and not a matter of personal taste. He did not 'solve' it in the sense that 'all the great mathematicians ever' were trying to solve it, as the article and the clip make out.
Similarly, I am not ringing up the Clay Institute to claim my $1M prize for 'solving' Navier-Stokes because I've just run a toy computational-fluid-dynamics problem in OpenFoam.
There is nothing good to be gained from obfuscation and sensationalisation in the public understanding of science.
I don't know what you are complaining about. He solved a problem that helped launch voyager probes and made them a success. The problem was hard, not solved before and he did it. Its absolutely brilliant for that effort, and the kind of impact it has had on human history. Even if it was easy, by a common mathematicians measure, its still great. Because he took it head on and solved it.
Your point of argument is a metaphor which a non technical author would have used or even used in exaggeration by mistake.
Sorry but pedantic arguments make a persons case look bad. Its like complaining about Khan academy's Python course. Smart intelligent people feel guilty when solving a problem well within their reach, was taken by somebody else and solved by them. It makes them feel more bad, when the solution becomes famous and brings a lot of fame to the inventor. It seems that is what you are going through here.
Indeed, and the rest of your reply goes on to confirm this, with the additional quite needless, but amusing, psychological analysis. I'm sorry if I worded it poorly in my first reply, although I can't see that it's particularly ambiguous.
The issue is quite orthogonal to him personally and his achievements, for which I have the utmost respect. I am fascinated by the early days of space exploration and am as impressed by this work as I was when I first read about it a few years ago.
The issue is with the journalism, written by the journalists, which attempts to sensationalise the achievements (which can stand on their own two feet without it) by making comparisons with famous mathematicians that are not valid comparisons, as Paul Lutus explains in his first post. It's just apples and oranges, and will at best be lost on the lay reader and at worst confuse the lay reader who looks into the three body problem further. Hence my point that it is unhelpful to the public understanding of science.
"At the time, Nasa couldn't guarantee a spacecraft for more than a few months of operational life, and so the outer planets were considered out of reach.
"That was until a 25-year-old mathematics graduate called Michael Minovitch came along in 1961."
Which is followed by,
"To reach Neptune [Voyager 1 and 2] would have to last for over a decade in space, operating in the darkest reaches of the Solar System billions of km from the Sun."
Solving a limited three-body problem and inventing the gravitational slingshot is way cool. Throwing in a mess of red herrings and yellow journalism detracts from the point of the article.
Oh, and anyone know why the Bbc doesn't want to capitalize 'NASA'?
Similarly, I am not ringing up the Clay Institute to claim my $1M prize for 'solving' Navier-Stokes because I've just run a toy computational-fluid-dynamics problem in OpenFoam.
There is nothing good to be gained from obfuscation and sensationalisation in the public understanding of science.