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Science News April 14, 2007 Julie J. Rehmeyer |
Euler's Beautiful Equation Leonhard Euler, one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, was born 300 years ago on April 15, 1707. He discovered the equation e ip = -1. |
Science News July 17, 2004 Ivars Peterson |
Waring Experiments The different ways of expressing whole numbers as sums of parts has long fascinated both professional and amateur mathematicians. |
Science News October 11, 2003 Ivars Peterson |
Goldbach Computations Goldbach's conjecture that every even number larger than 2 is the sum of two prime numbers remains unproven, but recent research may provide some insight. |
Science News December 2, 2000 Ivars Peterson |
Zeroing In on Catalan's Conjecture Preda Mihailescu of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich has proved a theorem that is likely to lead to a solution of Catalan's conjecture, a venerable problem involving relationships among whole numbers... |
Science News August 19, 2000 Ivars Peterson |
Goldbach's Prime Pairs Evenly divisible only by themselves and one, primes are a rich source of speculative ideas that mathematicians often find simple to state but difficult to prove. The Goldbach conjecture is a prime example of such a conundrum. |
Science News June 22, 2002 Ivars Peterson |
Conquering Catalan's Conjecture Preda Mihailescu of the University of Paderborn in Germany finally may have the key to a venerable problem known as Catalan's conjecture, which concerns the powers of whole numbers. |
Science News September 23, 2006 Ivars Peterson |
Euler's Bridges A well-known puzzle about bridges led to a pioneering paper in mathematical theory and topology. |
Science News March 1, 2003 Ivars Peterson |
Cracking Fermat Numbers Fermat numbers have what mathematicians sometimes describe as a "beautiful mathematical form," involving powers of 2. They were of interest 400 years ago and are now the subject of a wide-ranging worldwide computer search. |
Science News June 25, 2005 Ivars Peterson |
Magic Squares of Squares People have been toying with magic squares for more than 2,000 years--setting themselves increasingly difficult challenges to find arrays of numbers that fit given patterns. Here are some examples. |
Science News February 2, 2002 Ivars Peterson |
Euler's Homework Even the best and most prolific of mathematicians have had to do homework assignments. Famed Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler (1707-1783) was no exception... |
Science News May 11, 2002 Ivars Peterson |
Song-and-Dance Fermat Fermat's Last Tango, a musical based on the story of Fermat's last theorem and the quest to prove it, is cheerful, clever, and entertaining. Its varied music is engaging. It puts mathematics on display as an intensely human endeavor... |
Science News June 29, 2002 Ivars Peterson |
Dangerous Problems Some mathematical problems are easy to describe but turn out to be notoriously difficult to solve. Nonetheless, despite repeated warnings from those who have failed in the past, these unsolved problems continue to lure mathematicians into hours, days, and even years of futile labor. |
Science News March 30, 2002 Ivars Peterson |
Rainbow Randomness The branch of pure mathematics known as Ramsey theory concerns the existence of highly regular patterns in sufficiently large sets of randomly selected objects. Patterns can arise out of randomness in a variety of ways... |
Science News January 18, 2003 Ivars Peterson |
A Perfect Collaboration Together, Euclid of Alexandria (c325-c265 BC) and Leonard Euler (1707-1783), born in Switzerland and at various times resident in St. Petersburg and Berlin, collaborated on proving an interesting result in number theory -- without the benefit of e-mail or time travel. |