Edward Kasner: mathematician, educator and the creator of 'googol'

Life and career

Kasner earned his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1899 and spent much of his career associated with that institution. He taught, wrote and lectured on a variety of mathematical subjects, and he took a keen interest in making abstract concepts accessible to students and a general audience. His academic work touched on differential geometry and related fields; one mathematical object that bears his name—the Kasner metric in general relativity—reflects the reach of his research into problems of geometric curvature and spacetime models.

Invention of googol and googolplex

Around 1920 Kasner sought a memorable term to illustrate the enormity of certain numerical ideas. He asked his young nephew Milton Sirotta for a name and the child suggested the word "googol." Kasner defined a googol as 1 followed by 100 zeros and later introduced the related term googolplex, commonly described as 1 followed by a googol of zeros. Kasner first published these terms for a broad audience in the 1940 book Mathematics and the Imagination, co-authored with James R. Newman, where he used the terms to discuss scale, notation and the limits of physical representation.

Selected contributions

• Terminology: Popularized "googol" and "googolplex" as pedagogical tools to convey very large numbers.
• Research: Work in geometry and related mathematical areas, with later concepts such as the Kasner metric named in connection with his investigations.
• Education and writing: Co-author of accessible mathematical writing aimed at non-specialists and students.

Legacy and cultural impact

Kasner's playful yet instructive naming captured public imagination and influenced how people talk about large numbers. The word he promoted inspired later references in culture and technology: the famous search company drew its name from the same root idea (the company's name was inspired by the concept of a very large number) and popular awareness of "googol" grew as a result. For readers wanting more context on Kasner as a mathematician and on the broader field of mathematics, biographical and historical resources provide useful background.

Further notes

Kasner exemplified a 20th-century mathematician who balanced technical research with outreach. His anecdotes about naming large numbers remain a frequent example in discussions of mathematical notation, imagination and pedagogy, and his influence persists whenever those large-number terms appear in popular or technical discussions. Additional information about his biography and the modern references to his coinages can be found through archival and popular sources; the modern technology company inspired by the term is often mentioned in summaries of Kasner's cultural footprint (Google).