Edward Kasner ( Eng. Edward Kasner , April 8, 1878 - January 7, 1955 ) - American mathematician, professor. He is famous for introducing the words “ googol ” and “ googolplex ”, and also proposed the Kazner solution for vacuum space-time (1922), to which, according to the Belinsky – Lifshitz – Khalatnikov hypothesis , any cosmological solution near a singularity approaches .
| Edward casner | |
|---|---|
| English Edward Kasner | |
 | |
| Date of Birth | April 8, 1878 |
| Place of Birth | New York |
| Date of death | January 7, 1955 (aged 76) |
| Place of death | New York |
| A country | USA |
| Scientific field | maths |
| Place of work | Columbia University |
| Alma mater | Columbia University |
| supervisor | Felix Klein , David Hilbert |
| Famous students | Rufus Isaacs Jesse Douglas Joseph Ritt |
Biography
Kazner entered Columbia University and received his doctorate in 1899 . Around 1920, Kazner decided to come up with a good, contagious name for a large number. When he went with his nephews Milton (Milton Sirotta, 1911-1980) and Edwin Sirotti to the Palisades (New Jersey), Kazner asked them to think of good names. Milton said googol.
Kazner and his 9-year-old nephew also came up with the Googolplex number.
In 1940, Kazner, together with James R. Newman, published the book Mathematics and the Imagination, ISBN 0-486-41703-4 , where the term was first used.
- Mathematics and the Imagination (1940) by Kasner and James R. Newman. :
Words of wisdom are spoken by children at least as often as by scientists. The name "googol" was invented by a child (Dr. Kasner's nine-year-old nephew) who was asked to think up a name for a very big number, namely, 1 with a hundred zeros after it. He was very certain that this number was not infinite, and therefore equally certain that it had to have a name. At the same time that he suggested “googol” he gave a name for a still larger number: “Googolplex.” A googolplex is much larger than a googol, but is still finite, as the inventor of the name was quick to point out.
According to other sources, he first wrote about googol in 1938 in the article “New Names in Mathematics” in the January issue of Scripta Mathematica .
In 1955, the professor died, and after four decades, the term was used for self-naming by the now world-famous company Google .
Literature
- Kasner ,, Edward. Differential-geometric aspects of dynamics // The Logarithmic potential and other monographs / C.Carpelan, A.Parpola P.Koskikallio (ed.). - New York: Chelsea, 1980 .-- P. pp. 235-263. - ISBN ISBN 0-8284-0305-8 .
- Kasner, Edward and Newman, James Roy . Mathematics and the Imagination. - London: Penguin, 1940.
Links
- History from the Google website
- John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson . Kazner, Edward (English) - biography in the MacTutor archive.
- Douglas, Jesse . Edward Kasner, A Biographical Memoir - National Academy of Sciences, 1958.