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Gauss’s counterexample

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2016

Bob Hall*
Affiliation:
Homerton CollegeCambridge CB2 2PH

Extract

In an article by Nick MacKinnon in the December 1990 Gazette on Sophie Germain, some interesting mathematical questions were left unanswered, and I was inspired to have a go at following them up.

In correspondence with Gauss, Germain had made a conjecture which MacKinnon refined to the following statement

Conjecture. Let q be an odd prime, and a, b be coprime. If aq + bq can be represented by the form x2 + qy2, then so can a + b.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Mathematical Association 1992

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