I concocted the Spiral of Theodorus myself once. Though I figured it wasn't original, I am chagrined that I was beaten by 2500 years. It seemed clear to me that the vertices lie on some natural smooth curve. In the complex plane, the nth vertex is PROD(k = 1 to n; 1 + i/sqrt(k)) The best I could do with this is 1/sqrt(n!) PROD(k = 1 to n; sqrt(k) + i) which led me to believe the smooth curve might be akin to the gamma function, that is to say, well beyond my abilities. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Hans Havermann" <pxp@rogers.com> To: "math-fun" <math-fun@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 3:37 PM Subject: [math-fun] Devil in the Details
Mathematician "E. Teuffel" is mentioned in a number of Google hits. Does anyone here what the "E" stood for? By the way, in a Wikipedia entry on the Spiral of Theodorus, he is called Frage von E. Teuffel, an unfortunate transcription error. :)
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