Proofs of irrationality
Since the development of the foundations of set theory by Georg Cantor in the second half of the 19th century, it is a well-known fact that the set \(\mathbb{R}\) of real numbers is uncountable, and that therefore the set \(\mathbb{R}\setminus\mathbb{Q}\) of irrational (i.e., non-rational) numbers is uncountable, too. In other words, almost all real numbers are irrational. On the other hand, in the long history of mathematics as a whole, the study of specific real numbers with regard to their possible property of being irrational has always played a prominent role, ranking from the mathematics in ancient Greece and India to the contributions by Muslim mathematicians in the Middle ages and, finally, to the pioneering developments in Europe since the 17th century. In the course of these investigations over almost 3000 years, various methods of proving the irrationality of certain real numbers have been invented, and the study of both irrational and transcendental numbers is still a highly active area of research in contemporary mathematics.NEWLINENEWLINE The book under review offers an excursion into the fascinating world of irrational numbers, with particular emphasis on the broad spectrum of both methodological and historical proofs of irrationality for certain function values, infinite series, or geometrically defined real numbers. The main feature of the author's approach consists in the interesting organization of the material. More precisely, the various presented proofs of irrationality are divided into distinct methodological categories: proofs of existence, proofs by contradiction, proofs via special presentations, proofs via Diophantine approximation and Diophantine equations, and proofs of transcendence. Along this special path, the historical developments in the theory of irrational numbers are instructively outlined through numerous remarks and bibliographical hints.NEWLINENEWLINE As for the contents, the book comprises six chapters and an appendix. Chapter 1 serves as an introduction. Apart from the above-mentioned didactical principles of the entire treatise, this chapter also recalls some basic prerequisites such as the \(g\)-adic expansion of real numbers and their representation by regular continued fractions. Chapter 2 discusses proofs of the existence of irrational numbers by non-constructive methods (via uncountability arguments and linear independence over \(\mathbb{Q}\)), on the one hand, and by constructive methods (via irrational decimal fractions and irrational continued fractions) on the other. Chapter 3 explains various proofs of irrationality by the method of logical contradiction, thereby distinguishing between geometrical, arithmetical and analytical arguments, respectively. Chapter 4 turns to proofs of irrationality for real constants given by special decimal expansions or Cantor expansions, by expansions of function values into continued fractions, or by considering analytical functions such as the Riemann zeta function, Dirichlet series, the Gamma function, and the Vieta product, respectively. This chapter contains a wealth of classical results on irrational numbers, together with appropriate historical comments. Chapter 5 addresses the connection between irrationality and Diophantine approximation à la Dirichlet, Sierpiński, Hurwitz, Mahler, and others. The last section of this chapter gives some examples of irrational numbers related to special Diophantine equations, including repunits, Mersenne numbers, and Fermat numbers. Chapter 6 provides a very brief introduction to algebraic numbers and transcendental numbers, continues then with Liouville's approximation theorem for algebraic numbers, and finally establishes the so-called Liouville numbers as examples of transcendental (and therefore irrational) numbers.NEWLINENEWLINE At the end of this concluding chapter, different proofs of the transcendence of the number \(e\) (Hermite, Hilbert, Hurwitz) and of the number \(\pi\) (Lindemann, Hilbert) are presented, together with an outlook to further results in this context (à la Lindemann-Weierstrass, Hermite-Lindemann, Gel'fond-Schneider, Thue-Siegel-Roth, and others).NEWLINENEWLINE The book ends with an appendix titled ``The transcendence of \(\pi\) and the squaring of the circle'', in which a brief explanation of this classical problem (and its unsolvability) is sketched.NEWLINENEWLINE There is a rich bibliography of more than hundred-thirty references and a carefully compiled index, but the text contains no exercises for testing the reader's understanding of the matter.NEWLINENEWLINE All together, the presentation is utmost lucid and detailed, interspersed with numerous illustrating examples and instructive remarks, which makes the book perfectly suitable for undergraduate students of mathematics and interested amateurs likewise, but also instructors and historians of mathematics will find this special text inspiring and useful.
scientific article; zbMATH DE number 6358508