Contribution to van der Waerden's conjecture (Q1612512)

The author gives two different elementary proofs for the inequality which states that the permanent of doubly stochastic matrices is greater than or equal to \((n!/n^n)\). This inequality was proved earlier by the author [J. Comb. Inf. Syst. Sci. 2, 107-113 (1977; Zbl 0401.15006)], and independently by \textit{G. P. Egorychev} [Akademiya Nauk SSSR. Sibirskoe Otdelenie, Institut Fiziki im. L. V. Kirenskogo, Krasnoyarsk. Prepo. IFSO-13 M (1980; Zbl 0438.15010)] and \textit{D. I. Falikman} [Mat. Zamatki 29, 931-938 (1981; Zbl 0475.15007)].