Elementary proof of MacMahon's conjecture (Q1386526)

At the beginning of this century, MacMahon conjectured a nice product formula for the generating function for all symmetric plane partitions contained in a given box. This conjecture was finally settled by \textit{G. E. Andrews} [Pac. J. Math. 72, 283--291 (1977; Zbl 0376.10014)]. Since then, many more proofs have been published. What most of them share, is the proof of a certain ``key identity'', which, roughly stated, expresses the sum of all Schur functions whose shape is contained inside a given rectangle in terms of a special orthogonal character which is indexed by half of this rectangle. The author presents, for the first time, a completely elementary proof of this key identity. It is an inductive proof which requires just the Vandermonde determinant evaluation.