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    History of Number Theory

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    LiezlLzeilCarreonGalgo
    Number theory is one of the oldest branches of mathematics, with questions dating back over 2000 years still unanswered. While it developed separately from other fields for much of its history, increasing connections have been found to other areas of mathematics in recent centuries. Long considered esoteric, number theory has grown in practical importance through applications in coding theory, cryptography, and statistical mechanics. It also continues to be important in recreational mathematics.

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    History of Number Theory

    Uploaded by

    LiezlLzeilCarreonGalgo
    177 views1 page
    Number theory is one of the oldest branches of mathematics, with questions dating back over 2000 years still unanswered. While it developed separately from other fields for much of its history, increasing connections have been found to other areas of mathematics in recent centuries. Long considered esoteric, number theory has grown in practical importance through applications in coding theory, cryptography, and statistical mechanics. It also continues to be important in recreational mathematics.

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    History of number theory

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    Number theory is one of the oldest branches of mathematics, with questions dating back over 2000 years still unanswered. While it developed separately from other fields for much of its history, increasing connections have been found to other areas of mathematics in recent centuries. Long considered esoteric, number theory has grown in practical importance through applications in coding theory, cryptography, and statistical mechanics. It also continues to be important in recreational mathematics.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    177 views1 page

    History of Number Theory

    Uploaded by

    LiezlLzeilCarreonGalgo
    Number theory is one of the oldest branches of mathematics, with questions dating back over 2000 years still unanswered. While it developed separately from other fields for much of its history, increasing connections have been found to other areas of mathematics in recent centuries. Long considered esoteric, number theory has grown in practical importance through applications in coding theory, cryptography, and statistical mechanics. It also continues to be important in recreational mathematics.

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    History of number theory.

     Most areas of mathematics go from inception to


    maturity within at most a century. But in number theory there are questions
    that were formulated more than 2000 years ago (such as whether any odd
    perfect numbers exist) that have still not been answered. Of the principles
    that have been established in number theory, a great many were first
    revealed by explicit experiments. From its inception in classical ×,
    through its development in the 1600s to 1800s, number theory was largely
    separate from other fields of mathematics. But starting at the end of the
    1800s, increasing connections were found to other areas of both continuous
    and discrete mathematics. And through these connections, sophisticated
    proofs of such results as Fermat’s Last Theorem - open for 350 years - have
    been constructed. Long considered a rather esoteric branch of mathematics,
    number theory has in recent years grown in practical importance through its
    use in areas such as coding theory, cryptography and statistical mechanics.
    Properties of numbers and certain elementary aspects of number theory have
    also always played a central role in amateur and recreational mathematics.
    And as this chapter indicates, number theory can also be used to provide
    many examples of the basic phenomena discussed in this book.

    History

    The early Greek mathematicians (before 500 BCE) knew only the (positive)
    integers and their quotients (rational numbers). Numbers were both an area
    of academic study and a source of mysticism. The discovery of irrational
    numbers, those that could not be written as quotients of integers, was a
    major psychological and intellectual blow. Even after this traumatic event,
    the Greek mathematicians continued to place the integers in an exalted
    role. Plato says, "Arithmetic" [the study of numbers] "has a very great and
    elevating effect, compelling the mind to reason about abstract number."

    Until recently, Number Theory continued to hold the same pride of place as
    the most beautiful, most "pure," and least applicable of the fields of
    mathematics. As both art and intellectual training, it has been part of
    education and research for thousands of years. The early 20th century
    mathematician G. H. Hardy took great pride in the belief that number theory
    was the height of both beauty and uselessness.

    Cryptology, the study of encoding messages that could be read only by the
    intended recipient, is as old as warfare and political intrigue. The
    obvious and historical methods relied on a two-way key. The writer of the
    message used the key to encode it, and the recipient used the same key to
    decode it. Some keys were harder than others to guess, or "crack," but all
    keys had the disadvantage that they must somehow be communicated between
    sender and recipient. On the way, they could be stolen.

    In the 1970s, a different system of cryptography was invented. In this


    system, there are two different keys, one to encode, or encrypt, and the
    other to decode, or decrypt. The encryption key can be public; only the
    decryption key need be kept private, and only one party needs to have it.
    This is the kind of system currently in widest use. It was about this time
    that the internet began to gain importance, and it has become one of the
    largest users of encryption. It turns out that Number Theory, specifically
    the branch involving prime numbers, is the major tool in making these
    encryptions systems work. Number Theory is not so useless after all.

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