Googol and googolplex

Numericon gives the history of the words googol and googolplex:

… the famous googol, 10100 (a 1 followed by 100 zeros), defined in 1929 by American mathematician Edward Kasner and named by his nine-year-old nephew, Milton Sirotta. Milton went even further and came up with the googolplex, now defined as 10googol but initially defined by Milton as a 1, followed by writing zeros until you get tired.

Related post: There isn’t a googol of anything

One thought on “Googol and googolplex

  1. Apologies that there isn’t much mathematical significance in this post, but recall Doc Brown from Back to the Future Part 3, “Sarah, was one in a million…, one in a billion…, one in a googolplex.” Doc was sent back in time, to a time before the googol was ever defined, let alone the googolplex.

    Even more interesting is that the Google search engine founded its name by a Stanford graduate student accidentally typing “google” instead of googol, and hence the name Google was founded — coincidentally, Google’s headquarters in Mountain View has been named as Googleplex.

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