Mochizuki developed inter-universal Teichmüller theory,[2][3][4][5] which has attracted attention from non-mathematicians due to claims it provides a resolution of the abc conjecture.
[10] He remained at Princeton for graduate studies and received his Ph.D. in mathematics in 1992 after completing his doctoral dissertation, titled "The geometry of the compactification of the Hurwitz scheme," also under the supervision of Faltings.
On August 30, 2012, Mochizuki released four preprints, whose total size was about 500 pages, that developed inter-universal Teichmüller theory and applied it in an attempt to prove several very famous problems in Diophantine geometry.
[15] The majority of number theorists have found Mochizuki's preprints very difficult to follow and have not accepted the conjectures as settled, although there are a few prominent exceptions, including Go Yamashita, Ivan Fesenko, and Yuichiro Hoshi, who vouch for the work and have written expositions of the theory.
[18] The announcement was received with skepticism by Kiran Kedlaya and Edward Frenkel, as well as being described by Nature as "unlikely to move many researchers over to Mochizuki's camp".