A Standing Ovation for a Math Talk in which Nothing was Said!!
(Yes, I know some of you would gladly give a standing ovation for a math talk that said nothing!)
In 1903, Frank Cole delivered a talk at the annual American Mathematical Society (AMS) meeting. He never spoke a word. Here’s the short version of what happened:
At that time, it was thought that (2^67 – 1) [2 multiplied by itself 67 times, and then subtract 1] was prime. Mr (Dr?) Cole spent his entire ‘talk’ doing two things:
1. First he multiplied 2 by itself 67 times and subtracted one, correctly getting 147,573,052,589,676,412,927.
2. He then moved to another blackboard (if you’re too young to know what those are, ask someone over 50 or so), and multiplied (761838257287) x (193707721). His (correct) answer was the same number he got in #1 above.
The audience stared for a second, then burst into spontaneous applause, realizing that Cole had shown that the number in question had (at least) 2 other divisors (besides itself and 1), and therefore could not be prime!!
EPILOGUE: It turns out Cole had no mysterious secret. He had merely spent his Sunday afternoons for 20 years checking primes of this form and happened to get lucky! Even I roll my eyes at that! I mean – I know there was no Sunday afternoon football then, but double-checking certain types of primes?! 🙂
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For you math-types (or anyone else!) who would like to see a few more details, you may download and visit this 5-slide Powerpoint: MersenneStandingOvation