Elliptic Tales describes the latest developments in number theory by looking at one of the most exciting unsolved problems in contemporary mathematics--the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer Conjecture. The Clay Mathematics Institute is offering a prize of 1 million to anyone who can discover a general solution to the problem. In this book, Avner Ash and Robert Gross guide readers through the mathematics they need to understand this captivating problem. The key to the conjecture lies in elliptic curves, which are cubic equations in two variables. These equations may appear simple, yet they arise from so.