science · 12 April 1852 · 172 years ago
birth
Born 12 Apr 1852; died 6 Mar 1939 at age 86.
Carl Louis Ferdinand von Lindemann was a German mathematician who was the first to prove that is transcendental (it is not a solution of any algebraic equation with rational coefficients). This finally established the insoluble nature of the classical Greek mathematical problem of squaring the circle (constructing a square with the same area as a given circle using ruler and compasses alone.) In 1873, Lindemann visited Hermite in Paris and discussed the methods which Hermite had used in his proof that e, the base of natural logarithms, is transcendental. Following this visit, Lindemann was able to extend Hermite's results to show that was also transcendental (1882).
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