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January 2007Word History of the Month: GoogolNow that the trademarked Google search engine has given us the lowercase verb to google, and that word has entered the Collegiate Dictionary, you might want to hear the tale of the original googol. No searching is necessary; we have it right here. Mathematicians have long found it convenient to use scientific notation for large numbers in order to make their calculations less cumbersome. In the 1930s, American mathematics professor Edward Kasner found himself working with numbers as large as 1 followed by a hundred zeros. While it is possible to write this number using scientific notation, Dr. Kasner felt that it would be good to have a name for it, thus making it as easy to discuss as to write. According to his own account, Dr. Kasner one day asked his nine-year-old nephew Milton Sirotta to give him a name for a number and guaranteed he would use the word in the future. Milton made up the word googol. Dr. Kasner kept his promise, used the word, and it has been widely adopted by mathematicians. Dr. Kasner relates that his nephew went even further and provided him with a name for an unimaginably larger number, 1 followed by a googol of zeros or 10 to the tenth to the hundredth power. This number Milton called a googolplex, adding to his first creation the ending -plex as it is used in words like duplex. |