Hilbert's fully-booked hotel always finds room for one more
David Hilbert's 1924 thought experiment of a hotel with infinite rooms shows how infinity breaks the ordinary rules of counting.
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#history-of-mathematics.
Every story tagged #history-of-mathematics.
The gap in Andrew Wiles's proof of Fermat's Last Theorem
Wiles worked in secret for seven years, then a reviewer found a flaw. Quanta and Nautilus trace how he got round a 350-year-old problem, and nearly lost it.
Madhava's circle value missed by two, and no one knows why
A paper tests the series credited to Madhava of Sangamagrama and cannot explain his circle value. Almost nothing about his life is certain.
Buffon showed that falling needles could estimate pi
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, worked out in 1777 that a needle tossed onto lined paper could estimate pi through chance alone.
Andrew Wiles proved Fermat's Last Theorem after 358 years
Andrew Wiles proved Fermat's Last Theorem in 1995, working in secret for years and closing a gap that turned up during peer review.
Goldbach's 1742 claim about primes still has no proof
In 1742, Christian Goldbach told Euler that every even number over 2 is the sum of two primes. Nobody has proved it since.