History
The puzzle was originally proposed in 1848 by the chess player Max Bezzel, and over the years, many mathematicians, including Gauss, have worked on this puzzle and its generalized n-queens problem. The first solutions were provided by Franz Nauck in 1850. Nauck also extended the puzzle to n-queens problem (on an n×n board—a chessboard of arbitrary size). In 1874, S. Günther proposed a method of finding solutions by using determinants, and J.W.L. Glaisher refined this approach.
Edsger Dijkstra used this problem in 1972 to illustrate the power of what he called structured programming. He published a highly detailed description of the development of a depth-first backtracking algorithm.2
Read more about this topic: Eight Queens Puzzle
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The steps toward the emancipation of women are first intellectual, then industrial, lastly legal and political. Great strides in the first two of these stages already have been made of millions of women who do not yet perceive that it is surely carrying them towards the last.”
—Ellen Battelle Dietrick, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“In front of these sinister facts, the first lesson of history is the good of evil. Good is a good doctor, but Bad is sometimes a better.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)