Computer scientists are hardly "outsiders" to math problems. The famous computer scientists (Turing, Knuth, Dijkstra etc) were all mathematicians by training.
The title, and the biography of those that cracked it, does.
But I don't think it's false. The point is that this hyper-specialised; hyper-abstract field of mathematics, which nobody outside of had a grip on, rather suddenly came to be shown equivalent to many problems in many fields.
One such field & problem was (still mathematics, if you like, and) accessible to these computer scientists.
I particularly enjoyed:
> “It seemed so natural, so central to the kinds of things
> I think about,” he said. “I thought, ‘I’ve got to be
> able to prove that.’” He guessed that the problem might
> take him a few weeks.
>
> Instead, it took him five years.
Word spread quickly through the mathematics community that one of the paramount problems in C * -algebras and a host of other fields had been solved by three outsiders — computer scientists who had barely a nodding acquaintance with the disciplines at the heart of the problem.