THE MOST BEAUTIFUL EQUATION

"Like a Shakespearean sonnet that captures the essence of love, or paintings that bring the beauty of the human form which is much more than skin, Euler's equation reaches the depths of existence."

The mathematician Keith Devlin wrote these words about the above equation in 2002, in an article called "The Most Beautiful Equation". But why Euler's formula is so fantastic? And what does it mean?

Initially, the letter "e" is an irrational number (with endless digits) starting with 2.71828 ... Discovered in the context of ongoing compounds, he drives the exponential growth rate, the population of insects to the accumulation of interest and the fall radioactive. In mathematics, the number displays some amazing properties such as - using terms from the area - be equal to the sum of the inverse of all the factors of 0 to infinity. Indeed, the constant "and" permeates mathematics, appearing "out of nowhere" on a large number of important equations.

The "i" is called "imaginary number": the square root of negative one. It is so named because in reality there is that number multiplied by itself produces a negative (then the negative do not have real roots). But in mathematics, there are several situations where you are forced to use the negative root. The letter "i" then mark the places where this was done.

Pi, the ratio of a circle by its diameter, is one of the most beloved and well-known figures in mathematics. As the "e", it appears in a series of mathematical and physical formulas.

Putting it all together, the constant "and" elevated to imaginary "i" multiplied by Pi is equal to -1. And as the Euler equation by adding 1 we have 0. It seems almost impossible that all these strange numbers combine easy.