# Anthropic, OpenAI Researchers Spar Over What Appears To Be Credit For Progress Towards Solving Navier-Stokes Equation > Source: > Published: 2026-09-08 07:41:44+00:00 The public fight over credit for a string of fluid-dynamics breakthroughs has now spread beyond the two men at the center of it — Tristan Buckmaster and Sebastien Bubeck — and pulled in researchers from both Anthropic and OpenAI, trading pointedly mirrored jabs at each other on X. **Quick recap** Buckmaster, an NYU mathematician, and Anthropic’s Levent Alpöge [published](https://officechai.com/ai/mathematician-tristan-buckmaster-says-he-cracked-a-fluid-dynamics-problem-with-ai-accuses-openai-of-trying-to-take-credit/) AI-assisted, Lean-verified proofs of finite-time blow-up for several fluid equations under smooth forcing, drawing [praise](https://officechai.com/ai/terrance-tao-calls-buckmaster-alpoges-fluid-dynamics-proofs-a-remarkable-achievement-says-could-help-solve-navier-stokes/) from Fields Medalist Terence Tao. Buckmaster’s accompanying statement also alleged that OpenAI, including scientist Sebastien Bubeck, pressured him during the release — pushing to drop Alpöge from authorship and proposing deals over how a related OpenAI-claimed Navier-Stokes result should be announced. Bubeck [responded](https://officechai.com/ai/openais-sebastien-bubeck-calls-tristan-buckmasters-claims-of-trying-to-take-credit-for-fluid-dynamics-proofs-false-and-inflammatory/) publicly calling the allegations “false and inflammatory” and said he’d have more to say the next day. **Noam Brown’s reply to Bubeck’s post** Shortly after Bubeck’s denial, OpenAI’s Noam Brown quote-posted a message of his own. Brown described Bubeck as a well-meaning guy who should be glad that a week-long collaboration with Brown and unnamed others had “worked out,” while adding that he was sad they hadn’t gotten to finish it the way they’d wanted. He closed by saying he’d have more to say the next day too. **Sholto Douglas mirrors the jab — with a receipt attached** The reply that followed, from Anthropic’s Sholto Douglas, is where things get more pointed. It came in response to a post from Alpöge himself, who shared a screenshot of an email he’d sent Buckmaster all the way back on September 19, 2025 — a full year before this week’s controversy — under the subject line “Normal pure math collaboration with ai.” In it, Alpöge explains his motivation for reaching out at the time: after seeing a tweet from a Google DeepMind researcher, he says he’d been worried about a future in which corporations, rather than individual mathematicians, end up holding claim to major pure-math results. With what he expected to be only one Millennium Prize problem realistically solvable in the foreseeable future, he says he wrote to Buckmaster somewhat speculatively to ask whether he’d be interested in tackling it “in the traditional mathematical way.” Alpöge’s own caption on the screenshot joked that he should have titled the email “ideal fluids explode”. Quoting that post, Douglas echoed Brown’s exact template back at him almost word for word: describing Alpöge as a sweet guy with great intentions, glad that his year-long collaboration with Buckmaster had worked out, but sad they hadn’t gotten to finish it the way they wanted. **Why the mirroring matters** The near-identical phrasing looks like a deliberate rhetorical move rather than a coincidence, and the timestamps back that up — Douglas’s post came after Brown’s. Read together, the exchange functions as two things at once: a bit of dry mockery of Brown’s own framing turned back on him, and a pointed rebuttal of any suggestion that Alpöge and Buckmaster’s collaboration was a rushed, opportunistic reaction to rumors of OpenAI’s progress. By surfacing a year-old email, Alpöge and Douglas are making the case that the Buckmaster-Alpöge partnership — and its underlying motivation of keeping major math results in human, academic hands rather than corporate ones — predates this week’s dispute by a full year. Both Bubeck and Brown have said they’ll have more to say. Whether that clears anything up or escalates it further should become clear soon.