Pauli

[Arnold Zwicky]

On Jan 28, 2011, at 7:40 AM, Jon Lighter wrote:
>
> I read the same book [by George Gamow] when I was twelve. And I remember the "googol" thing.
> But he didn't attribute it to his nephew.
>
> BTW, acc. to Google Books the passage doesn't exist.  Like the square root
> of -1.

right kind of story, but wrong source: the wikipedia entry says:

The term was coined in 1938 by 9-year-old Milton Sirotta (1929–1981), nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner. Kasner popularized the concept in his book Mathematics and the Imagination (1940).

amz

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