Alexander Gelfond

We've talked about various things named after Jews: cities, atomic elements, mountains, moon craters...

What about numbers?

Yes, numbers. No, not of your usual counting variety; 9 is not named after an ancient Jewish philosopher. We're talking about irrational numbers; some of them are of increased interest to mathematicians and are given names. Π is the most known example. Or, for those who remember their high school math, e.

Well, there are a bunch of irrational numbers named after Jewish mathematicians, and Alexander Gelfond actually has a couple: √2√2 (square root of 2 to the power of square root of 2) is the Gelfond-Schneider constant. Gelfond didn't have to share the other: eπ (e to the power of π), or Gelfond's constant.

We could tell you why these numbers are important, but...

We don't want you to fall asleep while reading our website.