Hilbert's nineteenth problem

Hilbert's nineteenth problem is one of the 23 Hilbert problems, set out in a list compiled in 1900 by David Hilbert.[1] It asks whether the solutions of regular problems in the calculus of variations are always analytic.[2] Informally, and perhaps less directly, since Hilbert's concept of a "regular variational problem" identifies precisely a variational problem whose Euler–Lagrange equation is an elliptic partial differential equation with analytic coefficients,[3] Hilbert's nineteenth problem, despite its seemingly technical statement, simply asks whether, in this class of partial differential equations, any solution function inherits the relatively simple and well understood structure from the solved equation. Hilbert's nineteenth problem was solved independently in the late 1950s by Ennio De Giorgi and John Forbes Nash, Jr.