The document describes the divide and conquer algorithm for solving the closest pair problem. It divides the set of points into two equal subsets, recursively finds the closest pairs within each subset, and then examines point pairs between the two subsets that fall within a strip of width 2d, where d is the minimum of the closest pairs in each subset. It scans points within this strip to update the closest pair distance. The runtime of this algorithm is O(n log n) when applying the Master Theorem.