the top 10 most beautiful theorems
A 1988 poll of readers of the Mathematical Intelligencer ranked some of the most well-known theorems in mathematics thus:
- 1.
Euler’s identity,
- 2.
Euler’s formula for a polyhedron,
- 3.
There are infinitely many prime numbers
. See Euclid’s proof that there are infinitely many primes.
- 4.
There are only 5 regular polyhedra
- 5.
The sum of the reciprocals
of the squares of the positive integers is . See the Basel problem
.
- 6.
A continuous mapping of a closed unit disk into itself has a fixed point
- 7.
The square root of 2 is irrational
- 8.
is a transcendental number
- 9.
Every plane map can be colored with just 4 colors
- 10.
Every prime number of the form is the sum of two square integers in only one way
References
- 1 David Wells, The Penguin Book of Curious and Interesting Mathematics. London: Penguin Books (1997): 126 - 127