Edward Kasner - Icon Profile | Alexandria
Edward Kasner (1878-1955) was an American mathematician whose intellectual legacy extends far beyond traditional academic circles, most notably through his creation of the term "googol" - a number represented by a 1 followed by one hundred zeros. As a Columbia University professor and pioneering mathematical thinker, Kasner embodied the bridge between pure mathematical theory and popular scientific understanding in the early 20th century.
Born in New York City to Jewish immigrant parents, Kasner demonstrated extraordinary mathematical aptitude from an early age, completing his Ph.D. at Columbia University by age 22 - a remarkable achievement for the time. His academic journey unfolded during a transformative period in mathematics, as the field grappled with foundational questions about infinity, continuity, and the nature of numbers themselves.
Kasner's most enduring contribution to mathematical culture came through an unlikely collaboration with his nine-year-old nephew, Milton Sirotta, who in 1920 coined the term "googol" when Kasner sought a name for the unimaginably large number 10¹⁰⁰. This playful interaction between uncle and nephew led to the 1940 publication of "Mathematics and the Imagination," co-authored with James Newman, which became a landmark work in mathematical popularization. The term "googol" later inspired the naming of the technology company Google, creating an unexpected bridge between abstract mathematics and contemporary digital culture.
Beyond his popular legacy, Kasner made significant contributions to differential geometry and the theory of geometric curves, introducing concepts like "polygenic functions" and "bilateral derivative." His work on the geometry of trajectories of particles influenced both pure mathematics and theoretical physics, though many of his more esoteric mathematical insights remain underexplored by modern scholars.
Today, Kasner's legacy persists not only in the mathematical concepts he developed but in his demonstration that complex mathematical ideas could be made accessible to the general public without sacrificing their fundamental elegance. His story raises intriguing questions about the intersection of pure mathematics, popular culture, and the role of imagination in scientific discovery - questions that continue to resonate in our increasingly numerically-oriented world.