In mathematics, the Littlewood conjecture is an open problem (as of 2016) in Diophantine approximation, proposed by John Edensor Littlewood around 1930. It states that for any two real numbers α and β, In mathematics, the Littlewood conjecture is an open problem (as of 2016) in Diophantine approximation, proposed by John Edensor Littlewood around 1930. It states that for any two real numbers α and β, where ‖ ‖ {displaystyle Vert ,Vert } is here the distance to the nearest integer.