|
Edward Kasner (1878–1955) was a prominent American mathematician, best remembered today for popularizing the term googol. Kasner studied at Columbia University under Cassius Jackson Keyser. He received his Ph.D. in 1899; his dissertation was titled The Invariant Theory of the Inversion Group. Around 1920, in order to pique the interest of children, Kasner wanted a catchy name for a very large number: one, followed by a hundred zeros. On a walk in New Jersey's Palisades with his nephews, Milton (c. 1911–1980) and Edwin Sirotta, Kasner asked for their ideas. Nine-year-old Milton suggested "googol". The Internet search engine Google was named as a play on the number googol. Kasner also coined the term "googolplex" for the number written as one followed by a googol zeros; the Google offices are called Googleplex for this reason. In 1940, with James Roy Newman, Kasner authored a semi-popular book surveying the entire field of mathematics called Mathematics and the Imagination ISBN 0-486-41703-4. It was in this book that the term "googol" was introduced.
| ||||||||
|
| |||||||||
 |
|
| |