History
- The history of 'Farey series' is very curious — Hardy & Wright (1979) Chapter III
- ... once again the man whose name was given to a mathematical relation was not the original discoverer so far as the records go. — Beiler (1964) Chapter XVI
Farey sequences are named after the British geologist John Farey, Sr., whose letter about these sequences was published in the Philosophical Magazine in 1816. Farey conjectured, without offering proof, that each new term in a Farey sequence expansion is the mediant of its neighbours. Farey's letter was read by Cauchy, who provided a proof in his Exercises de mathématique, and attributed this result to Farey. In fact, another mathematician, Charles Haros, had published similar results in 1802 which were not known either to Farey or to Cauchy. Thus it was a historical accident that linked Farey's name with these sequences. This is an example of Stigler's law of eponymy.
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