Googol

Perfect Six

Three

OUR ANCESTORS were very fond of the number 3 and it occurs repeatedly in

scripture and mythology. Christianity has the Holy Trinity of the father, the son and the holy spirit. Islam has three holy cities, Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem. Yin and Yang 

were warring opposites, heaven and earth, that had to be balanced by a third party, man, and Taoism also has three deities called the Three Pure Ones. Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu are the trinity of Hindu gods, Buddha, Dharma and Sangha are the three ‘treasures’ of Buddhism, and Norse mythology tells of three Norns, Urd, Verdandi and Skuld, who wove the tapestry of our fate, each person’s life being a thread in the tapestry.

Two in Chinese

The Chinese place great importance on numbers according to their sound. The word for 2 (uhr) for example, sounds like ‘easy’, and is therefore considered a good number. Put it with another good number, such as 8 (prosperity), and the portents are deemed very favourable. However, be careful how you use it. For example, four sounds like ‘death’, so wearing the number 24 on your racing car

would be seen as reckless.

The Square Root of Two

One

• If a zero is a nobody, number one is the opposite extreme: the best, a winner, a leader, a favourite etc.

• One is a lonely number and the Chinese believe it to be unlucky.

• 1 is the atomic number of hydrogen, which means there is only one proton (positively charged particle) in each hydrogen atom. This puts hydrogen at the top of the Periodic Table, which lays out all the known elements – of which there are currently 117 confirmed – in order of their atomic number. Hydrogen is reckoned to makeup about three-quarters of the mass in the universe.

One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do
One is the loneliest number, worse than two
                             ‘One’ by Harry Nilsen

 

One

• If a zero is a nobody, number one is the opposite extreme: the best, a winner, a leader, a favourite etc.

• One is a lonely number and the Chinese believe it to be unlucky.

• 1 is the atomic number of hydrogen, which means there is only one proton (positively charged particle) in each hydrogen atom. This puts hydrogen at the top of the Periodic Table, which lays out all the known elements – of which there are currently 117 confirmed – in order of their atomic number. Hydrogen is reckoned to makeup about three-quarters of the mass in the universe.

One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do
One is the loneliest number, worse than two
                             ‘One’ by Harry Nilsen

 

Zero

THE ANCIENT GREEKS did not recognize 0 as a number. The people who mastered geometry and calculated pi were baffled by 0. As were the Romans. In India, where the number system we use today originated, the Hindus had some concept of it as a part of bigger numbers like 10 and 100, where it serves as a place-holder to show that the figure 1 represents 10s or 100s rather than units.They wrote it as a dot, which may have been enlarged to a ring, to give us the now familiar 0. An inscription dated 876AD shows use of a 0 as we would recognize it today.

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Fast-forward to 1975 and the Year Zero takes on a far more sinister significance. That year, when the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, seized control of Cambodia, they changed the calendar to Year Zero and erased all that had gone before. Anyone who was perceived to be a threat to the regime was executed. You could be killed for simply wearing glasses, as that was regarded as a sign of being an intellectual, and intellectuals were a threat. By the time Pol Pot’s killing spree was brought to an end

in 1979, an estimated 1 to 2 million people had been killed.

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The most universal word for 0 today is zero. Like nil, it originated in Italy, thanks to the legendary m a t h e m a t i c i a n Leonardo Fibonacci. He took the Arabic word ‘sifr’ (meaning empty) and gave it an Italian flourish, ‘zefiro’, which was later abbreviated to ‘zero’. It also gave us the word zephyr, for a faint, almost nonexistent wind.

The Book of Numbers

The first we know of numbers is when we start learning to count. One, two, buckle my shoe… Pretty soon we know the number of our age, the number of the day we were born, the month, the year. Before long we’ve learnt the numbers we like on the remote control, our friends’ telephone numbers, the number of our favourite football player, how much pocket money we’re owed and the cost of the things we want to buy… In the space of a handful of years, our knowledge of numbers soars from one andtwo to thousands and millions. And it goes on growing ad infinitum.

Numbers have a magical quality. Some people claim to see certain numbers appearing everywhere they look and attach supernatural power to it. In mathematics too, the way some numbers behave can seem amazing. Even Pythagoras, the great Greek mathematician, attributed mystical qualities to some of the numbers that captured his imagination. In some cases, numbers have assumed cult status from their appearance inpopular culture, religion, mythology or historical events: 9/11, Catch-22, Room 101, 666 – the number of the beast.

Amidst all of this it’s easy to forget that most of the numbers we use, and the ways they are applied, are the invention of man. That there are 24 hours in a day, and 360 degrees in a circle, and that 24 divides into 360, is not a miracle of nature. That said, much of the significance we attach to numbers stems from our observation of natural fact: the number of fingers on each hand; the number of days and nights that pass between fullmoons; the number of planets visible to the naked eye.

This book is a tribute to the charisma of numbers. There are numbers from nature, mathematics, science, religion, mythology, superstition, art, history, technology… In an effort to apply some structure to this mind boggling subject, I have included every whole number from 0 to 100 (plus a few notable imperfect numbers), and then picked out a selection of larger numbers that should either be familiar to everyone, or relate to something that is familiar. If I’ve missed out your favourite number, I apologize. Thisis not a definitive list. How could it be? The choice is infinite.

Tim Glynne-Jones