William Stanley Jevons - Number Theory

Number Theory

Jevons had written in his Principles of Science, p. 123, "Can the reader say what two numbers multiplied together will produce the number 8616460799 ? I think it unlikely that anyone but myself will ever know." This became known as Jevons' Number and was factored by Derrick Norman Lehmer in 1903 and later on a pocket calculator by Solomon W. Golomb.

Read more about this topic:  William Stanley Jevons

Famous quotes containing the words number and/or theory:

    Among a hundred windows shining
    dully in the vast side
    of greater-than-palace number such-and-such
    one burns
    these several years, each night
    as if the room within were aflame.
    Denise Levertov (b. 1923)

    Don’t confuse hypothesis and theory. The former is a possible explanation; the latter, the correct one. The establishment of theory is the very purpose of science.
    Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962)