The Basel Problem (1734)

The Basel Problem was a famous Problem that took the best out of all the famous
mathematicians for NINETYY years; much like the world famous Fermats last theorem
did to scores of mathematicians all over the world. It was conclusively proved in 1995, more
than 300 years after it was first posed by Pierre D Fermat, a French mathematician in the
mid-17th century.
The Basel Problem was originally posed by Pietro Mengoli in 1644. The Problem
appears deceptively simple. What is the sum of inverse of all the perfect squares? (1/1 2 + 1/22
+ 1/32 + 1/42 + . . . 1/k2 + . . . = ? ). Mengoli himself was unable to find the solution to the
Problem. It was Jacob Bernoulli, in 1689, who brought the Problem to the attention of all the
mathematicians across the world. Jacob himself couldnt solve it. And dont forget that a
battalion of brilliant mathematicians were in their primes in 1689. It included none other than
Isaac Newton, Gottfried Leibnitz, Jacob Bernoulli, John Bernoulli, LHospital, Brook Taylor,
and the like. Leonhard Euler (17071783), considered to be the most productive
mathematician of all time, was not on the scene yet. In 1734, A 27-year old Euler comes out
and says to a stunned Mathematics community that ?= 2/6. Now, hold your breath and
take a look at Leonhard Eulers ridiculously simple proof that eluded mathematicians
for nearly a century.
Here we go . . . If any polynomial f(x) has roots x1, x2, x3, . . . xn, it can be expressed as
( )

)(

)(

(i)

where the constant A is to be conditionally evaluated.

HSC stuff

We know, sin x has roots at .. .. .. -3

.. .. ..

High school stuff

After judiciously grouping the pairs [for instance (x- ) pairs up with (x+ ), (x- ) with
(x+ ), and so on] and writing the orphaned term (x - 0) as x, sin x reduces to
(

)(

)(

(ii)

Dividing throughout by x, and by

within each round brackets, we have A getting
replaced by a new constant, B and (ii) takes the form
(

)(

)(

(iii)

Now comes the beauty of Bs evaluation from (iii)

As x0,

Reducing (iii) to

B=1.

HSC stuff

)(

)(

(1)

By Taylor series expansion,

HSC stuff

The next beauty follows by a simple division of the above equation by x which leads to
(2)
We now head for the ultimate beauty- the grand finale - of collecting all the terms involving
ONLY
from equations (1) and (2)
Upper Primary School stuff

+=

PROVED

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