In 1735, in the city of Konigsberg, Germany, the people faced a conundrum: a river ran through the city dividing it into four separate land masses. Seven bridges were built so that people could get from one point to another, but herein lay the puzzle; was it possible to get around the city without crossing one bridge twice? It was pondered, strategies devised— laymen, aristocrats, clergy and scholars were all stymied, all except one man, the Swiss mathematician, Leonhard Euler. Euler solved the problem mathematically by envisioning points in the land masses as vertices, the bridges as arcs, in short, converting a geographical problem into a geometric equation. This penchant for looking beyond facades and pinpointing the invisible and abstract forces at work is what makes Euler’s work still relevant today. Look around you, most of the technology you are using right now is thanks to some Euler calculation: water out of your shower, your cable TV reception…
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In 1735, in the city of Konigsberg, Germany, the people faced a conundrum: a river ran through the city dividing it into four separate land masses. Seven bridges were built so that people could get from one point to another, but herein lay the puzzle; was it possible to get around the city without crossing one bridge twice? It was pondered, strategies devised— laymen, aristocrats, clergy and scholars were all stymied, all except one man, the Swiss mathematician, Leonhard Euler. Euler solved the problem mathematically by envisioning points in the land masses as vertices, the bridges as arcs, in short, converting a geographical problem into a geometric equation. This penchant for looking beyond facades and pinpointing the invisible and abstract forces at work is what makes Euler’s work still relevant today. Look around you, most of the technology you are using right now is thanks to some Euler calculation: water out of your shower, your cable TV reception…
