Concept
Apéry's constant
Related concepts (5)
Roger Apéry
Roger Apéry (apeʁi; 14 November 1916, Rouen – 18 December 1994, Caen) was a French mathematician most remembered for Apéry's theorem, which states that ζ(3) is an irrational number. Here, ζ(s) denotes the Riemann zeta function. Apéry was born in Rouen in 1916 to a French mother and Greek father. His childhood was spent in Lille until 1926, when the family moved to Paris, where he studied at the Lycée Ledru-Rollin and the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. He was admitted at the École normale supérieure in 1935.
Basel problem
The Basel problem is a problem in mathematical analysis with relevance to number theory, concerning an infinite sum of inverse squares. It was first posed by Pietro Mengoli in 1650 and solved by Leonhard Euler in 1734, and read on 5 December 1735 in The Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Since the problem had withstood the attacks of the leading mathematicians of the day, Euler's solution brought him immediate fame when he was twenty-eight.
Harmonic number
In mathematics, the n-th harmonic number is the sum of the reciprocals of the first n natural numbers: Starting from n = 1, the sequence of harmonic numbers begins: Harmonic numbers are related to the harmonic mean in that the n-th harmonic number is also n times the reciprocal of the harmonic mean of the first n positive integers. Harmonic numbers have been studied since antiquity and are important in various branches of number theory.
Riemann zeta function
The Riemann zeta function or Euler–Riemann zeta function, denoted by the Greek letter ζ (zeta), is a mathematical function of a complex variable defined as for , and its analytic continuation elsewhere. The Riemann zeta function plays a pivotal role in analytic number theory, and has applications in physics, probability theory, and applied statistics. Leonhard Euler first introduced and studied the function over the reals in the first half of the eighteenth century.
Transcendental number
In mathematics, a transcendental number is a real or complex number that is not algebraic – that is, not the root of a non-zero polynomial of finite degree with rational coefficients. The best known transcendental numbers are π and e. Though only a few classes of transcendental numbers are known – partly because it can be extremely difficult to show that a given number is transcendental – transcendental numbers are not rare: indeed, almost all real and complex numbers are transcendental, since the algebraic numbers form a countable set, while the set of real numbers and the set of complex numbers are both uncountable sets, and therefore larger than any countable set.