Teenage students discover 'impossible' proof to 2000-year-old math theorem
Image: Essence
High school seniors Calcea Johnson and Ne’Kiya Jackson, who attend St. Mary’s Academy in New Orleans, have provided an “impossible” proof to a 2000-year-old math theorem. In March, the teenagers made their presentation titled: An Impossible Proof Of Pythagoras at the American Mathematics Society’s Spring Southeastern Section Meeting that took place at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.
Their submission states: “In the 2000 years since trigonometry was discovered it’s always been assumed that any alleged proof of Pythagoras’s Theorem based on trigonometry must be circular…We present a new proof of Pythagoras’s Theorem…and we show that the proof is independent of the Pythagorean trig identity sin2x+cos2x=1.”
In simpler terms, Johnson and Jackson were able to prove the theorem by using trigonometry rather than conventional circular reasoning. This is a feat that mathematicians have long believed to be impossible.
“There’s nothing like it – being able to do something that people don’t think that young people can do,” Johnson said in a recent interview.
The teens credited their teachers who consistently challenged them to push their boundaries and live up to the school’s slogan “No excellence without hard labor.”
Johnson described the “unparalleled feeling” she and Jackson shared as they presented their findings to researchers. Following their impressive discovery, Catherine Roberts, Executive Director of the American Mathematical Society, has encouraged the students to submit their work to a peer-reviewed journal for further examination.
“[We] celebrate these early career mathematicians for sharing their work with the wider mathematics community” she said, encouraging the promising teenagers to continue their studies in mathematics.
Already heeding this advice, Johnson and Jackson have plans to pursue higher education degrees studying environmental engineering and biochemistry.
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