abstract
| - The first proof that the base of the natural logarithms, e, is transcendental dates from 1873. We will now follow the strategy of David Hilbert (1862–1943) who gave a simplification of the original proof of Charles Hermite. The idea is the following: Assume, for purpose of finding a contradiction, that e is algebraic. Then there exists a finite set of integer coefficients satisfying the equation: and such that and are both non-zero. Depending on the value of n, we specify a sufficiently large positive integer k (to meet our needs later), and multiply both sides of the above equation by , where the notation will be used in this proof as shorthand for the integral: We have arrived at the equation: which can now be written in the form where The plan of attack now is to show that for k sufficiently large, the above relations are impossible to satisfy because is a non-zero integer and is not. The fact that is a nonzero integer results from the relation which is valid for any positive integer j and can be proved using integration by parts and mathematical induction. To show that for sufficiently large k we first note that is the product of the functions and . Using upper bounds for and on the interval [0,n] and employing the fact for every real number G is then sufficient to finish the proof. A similar strategy, different from Lindemann's original approach, can be used to show that the number π is transcendental. Besides the gamma-function and some estimates as in the proof for e, facts about symmetric polynomials play a vital role in the proof.
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