Two years ago, a couple of high school classmates each composed a mathematical marvel, a trigonometric proof of the Pythagorean theorem. Now, they’re unveiling 10 more.
For over 2,000 years, such proofs were considered impossible. And yet, undeterred, Ne’Kiya Jackson and Calcea Johnson published their new proofs October 28 in American Mathematical Monthly.
“Some people have the impression that you have to be in academia for years and years before you can actually produce some new mathematics,” says mathematician Álvaro Lozano-Robledo of the University of Connecticut in Storrs. But, he says, Jackson and Johnson demonstrate that “you can make a splash even as a high school student.”