Édouard Lucas facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Édouard Lucas
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| Born | 4 April 1842 |
| Died | 3 October 1891 (aged 49) |
| Nationality |  France |
| Alma mater | École Normale Supérieure |
| Known for | Lucas number Lucas sequence Lucas primality test Lucas–Lehmer primality test Lucas prime Lucas's theorem Genaille–Lucas rulers Ménage problem Tower of Hanoi |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics |
François Édouard Anatole Lucas (born April 4, 1842 – died October 3, 1891) was a French mathematician. He is famous for studying the Fibonacci sequence. The related Lucas sequences and Lucas numbers are named after him.
Who Was Édouard Lucas?
Édouard Lucas was born in Amiens, France. He studied at a top school called the École Normale Supérieure. Later, he worked at the Paris Observatory. He also became a math teacher in Paris. He taught at the Lycée Saint Louis and the Lycée Charlemagne.
Lucas as a Soldier
Lucas was an artillery officer in the French Army. He served during the Franco-Prussian War. This war happened between 1870 and 1871.
Solving the Cannonball Problem
In 1875, Lucas presented a tough math puzzle. It is known as the cannonball problem. Imagine you have cannonballs arranged in a square on the ground. Can you stack them to form a square pyramid?
Lucas asked to prove that only one way works for more than one layer. This is when you have 24 layers of cannonballs. The total number of cannonballs would be 70 squared. It took many years to find a proof for this problem.
Testing Big Prime Numbers
Lucas was very good at finding prime numbers. A prime number can only be divided by 1 and itself. In 1857, when he was just 15, Lucas started a huge task. He began testing if the number 2127 − 1 was prime.
This number has 39 digits! He worked on it by hand for 19 years. In 1876, he finally proved it was a prime number. This was the largest known Mersenne prime for 75 years. It might be the biggest prime ever proven by hand. Later, other mathematicians used his ideas to make faster tests.
Fun with Math Puzzles
Lucas also loved recreational mathematics. These are math problems that are fun to solve. He found a clever way to solve the Baguenaudier puzzle. This puzzle involves loops and rings.
He also invented the famous Tower of Hanoi puzzle in 1883. He sold this puzzle using a secret name. The name was N. Claus de Siam. This was an anagram of Lucas d'Amiens. An anagram is when you rearrange letters to make new words. He also wrote about the dots and boxes game in 1889.
How Lucas Died
Édouard Lucas died in an unusual way. He was at a dinner for a science meeting. A waiter accidentally dropped some dishes. A piece of broken plate cut Lucas on the cheek. He died a few days later from a serious infection. He was 49 years old.
Lucas's Books
Lucas wrote several books about mathematics. Some of them were about fun math puzzles.
- Recherches Sur Plusieurs Ouvrages De Léonard De Pise Et Sur Diverses Questions D’Arithmétique Supérieure (1877)
- Récréations scientifiques (1880)
- Théorie des nombres, Tome Premier (1891)
- Récréations mathématiques (1894)
- L'arithmétique amusante (1895)
See also
In Spanish: Édouard Lucas para niños
- Lucas pseudoprime
- Lucas–Carmichael number
- Pell-Lucas numbers
