Kepler's Conjecture/Historical Note

Historical Note on Kepler's Conjecture

This result was conjectured by Johannes Kepler in $1611$.

While it is in a certain sense obvious that the most efficient technique for packing spheres is the one traditionally used by greengrocer's to stack orange's, it proved challenging to actually prove it.

Many mathematicians believe, and all physicists know, that the density cannot exceed $\dfrac \pi {\sqrt {18} }$.
-- Claude Ambrose Rogers


The proof by Thomas Callister Hales was finally declared complete and correct in $2014$, at the climax of a project spanning some $20$ years.


Sources

  • 1947: C.A. Rogers: Existence Theorems in the Geometry of Numbers (Ann. Math. Ser. 2 Vol. 48: pp. 994 – 1002)  www.jstor.org/stable/1969390
  • 1986: David Wells: Curious and Interesting Numbers ... (previous) ... (next): $0 \cdotp 7404 \ldots$
  • 1997: David Wells: Curious and Interesting Numbers (2nd ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): $0 \cdotp 7404 \ldots$
  • 2008: David Nelson: The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics (4th ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): Kepler's conjecture (J. Kepler, 1611)
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