The permanent of a doubly stochastic matrix is at least that of the matrix with each entry $1/n$ (the matrices are $n x n$). This theorem, popularly known as the 'Van der Waerden conjecture', remained open for over fifty years, before it was finally proved by Falikman (1979) and Egoritsjev (1980). Relatively recently, in 2008, Leonid Gurvits gave an amazingly short proof for it. In this talk, we will discuss this new proof.
