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Proof By Infinite Descent
In mathematics, a proof by infinite descent, also known as Fermat's method of descent, is a particular kind of proof by contradiction used to show that a statement cannot possibly hold for any number, by showing that if the statement were to hold for a number, then the same would be true for a smaller number, leading to an infinite descent and ultimately a contradiction. It is a method which relies on the well-ordering principle, and is often used to show that a given equation, such as a Diophantine equation, has no solutions. Typically, one shows that if a solution to a problem existed, which in some sense was related to one or more natural numbers, it would necessarily imply that a second solution existed, which was related to one or more 'smaller' natural numbers. This in turn would imply a third solution related to smaller natural numbers, implying a fourth solution, therefore a fifth solution, and so on. However, there cannot be an infinity of ever-smaller natural numbers, and t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mathematics
Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics with the major subdisciplines of number theory, algebra, geometry, and analysis, respectively. There is no general consensus among mathematicians about a common definition for their academic discipline. Most mathematical activity involves the discovery of properties of abstract objects and the use of pure reason to prove them. These objects consist of either abstractions from nature orin modern mathematicsentities that are stipulated to have certain properties, called axioms. A ''proof'' consists of a succession of applications of deductive rules to already established results. These results include previously proved theorems, axioms, andin case of abstraction from naturesome basic properties that are considered true starting points of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Inversive Geometry
Inversive activities are processes which self internalise the action concerned. For example, a person who has an Inversive personality internalises his emotions from any exterior source. An inversive heat source would be a heat source where all the heat remains within the object and is not subject to any format of transference Transference (german: Übertragung) is a phenomenon within psychotherapy in which the "feelings, attitudes, or desires" a person had about one thing are subconsciously projected onto the here-and-now Other. It usually concerns feelings from a ... or externalisation. Is the opposite of Transversive activities and objects which suggest by their very nature that the outcome is transferred to the secondary source. Psychoanalytic terminology Emotion ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Irrational Number
In mathematics, the irrational numbers (from in- prefix assimilated to ir- (negative prefix, privative) + rational) are all the real numbers that are not rational numbers. That is, irrational numbers cannot be expressed as the ratio of two integers. When the ratio of lengths of two line segments is an irrational number, the line segments are also described as being '' incommensurable'', meaning that they share no "measure" in common, that is, there is no length ("the measure"), no matter how short, that could be used to express the lengths of both of the two given segments as integer multiples of itself. Among irrational numbers are the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, Euler's number ''e'', the golden ratio ''φ'', and the square root of two. In fact, all square roots of natural numbers, other than of perfect squares, are irrational. Like all real numbers, irrational numbers can be expressed in positional notation, notably as a decimal number. In the cas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Square Root Of 2
The square root of 2 (approximately 1.4142) is a positive real number that, when multiplied by itself, equals the number 2. It may be written in mathematics as \sqrt or 2^, and is an algebraic number. Technically, it should be called the principal square root of 2, to distinguish it from the negative number with the same property. Geometrically, the square root of 2 is the length of a diagonal across a square with sides of one unit of length; this follows from the Pythagorean theorem. It was probably the first number known to be irrational. The fraction (≈ 1.4142857) is sometimes used as a good rational approximation with a reasonably small denominator. Sequence in the On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences consists of the digits in the decimal expansion of the square root of 2, here truncated to 65 decimal places: : History The Babylonian clay tablet YBC 7289 (c. 1800–1600 BC) gives an approximation of in four sexagesimal figures, , which is accurate to about six ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mordell–Weil Theorem
In mathematics, the Mordell–Weil theorem states that for an abelian variety A over a number field K, the group A(K) of ''K''-rational points of A is a finitely-generated abelian group, called the Mordell–Weil group. The case with A an elliptic curve E and K the field of rational numbers is Mordell's theorem, answering a question apparently posed by Henri Poincaré around 1901; it was proved by Louis Mordell in 1922. It is a foundational theorem of Diophantine geometry and the arithmetic of abelian varieties. History The ''tangent-chord process'' (one form of addition theorem on a cubic curve) had been known as far back as the seventeenth century. The process of infinite descent of Fermat was well known, but Mordell succeeded in establishing the finiteness of the quotient group E(\mathbb)/2E(\mathbb) which forms a major step in the proof. Certainly the finiteness of this group is a necessary condition for E(\mathbb) to be finitely generated; and it shows that the rank is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Galois Cohomology
In mathematics, Galois cohomology is the study of the group cohomology of Galois modules, that is, the application of homological algebra to modules for Galois groups. A Galois group ''G'' associated to a field extension ''L''/''K'' acts in a natural way on some abelian groups, for example those constructed directly from ''L'', but also through other Galois representations that may be derived by more abstract means. Galois cohomology accounts for the way in which taking Galois-invariant elements fails to be an exact functor. History The current theory of Galois cohomology came together around 1950, when it was realised that the Galois cohomology of ideal class groups in algebraic number theory was one way to formulate class field theory, at the time it was in the process of ridding itself of connections to L-functions. Galois cohomology makes no assumption that Galois groups are abelian groups, so this was a non-abelian theory. It was formulated abstractly as a theory of class ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Height Function
A height function is a function that quantifies the complexity of mathematical objects. In Diophantine geometry, height functions quantify the size of solutions to Diophantine equations and are typically functions from a set of points on algebraic varieties (or a set of algebraic varieties) to the real numbers. For instance, the ''classical'' or ''naive height'' over the rational numbers is typically defined to be the maximum of the numerators and denominators of the coordinates (e.g. for the coordinates ), but in a logarithmic scale. Significance Height functions allow mathematicians to count objects, such as rational points, that are otherwise infinite in quantity. For instance, the set of rational numbers of naive height (the maximum of the numerator and denominator when expressed in lowest terms) below any given constant is finite despite the set of rational numbers being infinite. In this sense, height functions can be used to prove asymptotic results such as Baker's t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
André Weil
André Weil (; ; 6 May 1906 – 6 August 1998) was a French mathematician, known for his foundational work in number theory and algebraic geometry. He was a founding member and the ''de facto'' early leader of the mathematical Bourbaki group. The philosopher Simone Weil was his sister. The writer Sylvie Weil is his daughter. Life André Weil was born in Paris to agnostic Alsatian Jewish parents who fled the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine by the German Empire after the Franco-Prussian War in 1870–71. Simone Weil, who would later become a famous philosopher, was Weil's younger sister and only sibling. He studied in Paris, Rome and Göttingen and received his doctorate in 1928. While in Germany, Weil befriended Carl Ludwig Siegel. Starting in 1930, he spent two academic years at Aligarh Muslim University in India. Aside from mathematics, Weil held lifelong interests in classical Greek and Latin literature, in Hinduism and Sanskrit literature: he had taught himself Sanskrit in 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Abelian Variety
In mathematics, particularly in algebraic geometry, complex analysis and algebraic number theory, an abelian variety is a projective algebraic variety that is also an algebraic group, i.e., has a group law that can be defined by regular functions. Abelian varieties are at the same time among the most studied objects in algebraic geometry and indispensable tools for much research on other topics in algebraic geometry and number theory. An abelian variety can be defined by equations having coefficients in any field; the variety is then said to be defined ''over'' that field. Historically the first abelian varieties to be studied were those defined over the field of complex numbers. Such abelian varieties turn out to be exactly those complex tori that can be embedded into a complex projective space. Abelian varieties defined over algebraic number fields are a special case, which is important also from the viewpoint of number theory. Localization techniques lead naturally fr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Finitely-generated Abelian Group
In abstract algebra, an abelian group (G,+) is called finitely generated if there exist finitely many elements x_1,\dots,x_s in G such that every x in G can be written in the form x = n_1x_1 + n_2x_2 + \cdots + n_sx_s for some integers n_1,\dots, n_s. In this case, we say that the set \ is a ''generating set'' of G or that x_1,\dots, x_s ''generate'' G. Every finite abelian group is finitely generated. The finitely generated abelian groups can be completely classified. Examples * The integers, \left(\mathbb,+\right), are a finitely generated abelian group. * The integers modulo n, \left(\mathbb/n\mathbb,+\right), are a finite (hence finitely generated) abelian group. * Any direct sum of finitely many finitely generated abelian groups is again a finitely generated abelian group. * Every lattice forms a finitely generated free abelian group. There are no other examples (up to isomorphism). In particular, the group \left(\mathbb,+\right) of rational numbers is not finitely generated ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mordell
Louis Joel Mordell (28 January 1888 – 12 March 1972) was an American-born British mathematician, known for pioneering research in number theory. He was born in Philadelphia, United States, in a Jewish family of Lithuanian extraction. Education Mordell was educated at the University of Cambridge where he completed the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos as a student of St John's College, Cambridge, starting in 1906 after successfully passing the scholarship examination. He graduated as third wrangler in 1909. Research After graduating Mordell began independent research into particular diophantine equations: the question of integer points on the cubic curve, and special case of what is now called a Thue equation, the Mordell equation :''y''2 = ''x''3 + ''k''. He took an appointment at Birkbeck College, London in 1913. During World War I he was involved in war work, but also produced one of his major results, proving in 1917 the multiplicative property of Srinivasa Ramanujan's tau- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
L-function
In mathematics, an ''L''-function is a meromorphic function on the complex plane, associated to one out of several categories of mathematical objects. An ''L''-series is a Dirichlet series, usually convergent on a half-plane, that may give rise to an ''L''-function via analytic continuation. The Riemann zeta function is an example of an ''L''-function, and one important conjecture involving ''L''-functions is the Riemann hypothesis and its generalization. The theory of ''L''-functions has become a very substantial, and still largely conjectural, part of contemporary analytic number theory. In it, broad generalisations of the Riemann zeta function and the ''L''-series for a Dirichlet character are constructed, and their general properties, in most cases still out of reach of proof, are set out in a systematic way. Because of the Euler product formula there is a deep connection between ''L''-functions and the theory of prime numbers. The mathematical field that studies L-func ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
