Skip to ContentSkip to Navigation
Research Bernoulli Institute Calendar

Colloquium Mathematics - Prof. dr. Jaap Top

When:Tu 16-11-2021 16:00 - 17:00
Where:5173.0151

Title: My fascination for CONGRUENTS

Abstract:

A simple (although not the original) definition of CONGRUENTS is that they are the natural numbers that occur as the area of a right triangle with rational side lengths.Inspired by the "Arithmetica" written by the 3rd century A.D. mathematician Diophantus of Alexandria, the notion appears in Arab manuscripts from the 10th century.The long list of sometimes surprising results on CONGRUENTS, as well as unexpected connections to various mathematical topics still continues more than a millennium later.

In the talk some classical and some very recent examples of this are presented.