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Leonhard Euler's Integral: a Historical Profile of the Gamma Function: in Memoriam: Milton Abramowitz Author(S): Philip J

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Leonhard Euler's Integral: A Historical Profile of the Gamma Function: In Memoriam: Milton Abramowitz Author(s): Philip J. Davis Reviewed work(s): Source: The American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 66, No. 10 (Dec., 1959), pp. 849-869 Published by: Mathematical Association of America Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2309786 . Accessed: 15/03/2013 19:12 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Mathematical Association of America is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The American Mathematical Monthly. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded on Fri, 15 Mar 2013 19:12:00 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 19591 LEONHARD EULER'S INTEGRAL 849 FIG. 2: p=3, q=1, k=2a. LEONHARD EULER'S INTEGRAL: A HISTORICAL PROFILE OF THE GAMMA FUNCTION IN MEMORIAM: MITON ABRAMOWITZ PHILIP J. DAVIS, National Bureau of Standards,Washington, D. C. Many people think that mathematical ideas are static. They think that the ideas briginatedat some time in the historicalpast and remain unchanged for all futuretimes. There are good reasons forsuch a feeling.After all, the formula forthe area of a circle was 7rr2in Euclid's day and at the presenttime is still irr2. But to one who knows mathematicsfrom the inside, the subject has rather the feelingof a living thing. It grows daily by the accretion of new information,it changes daily by regardingitself and the world from new vantage points, it maintains a regulatorybalance by consigningto the oblivion of irrelevancya This content downloaded on Fri, 15 Mar 2013 19:12:00 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 850 LEONHARD EULER S INTEGRAL [December fractionof its past accomplishments. The purpose of this essay is to illustrate this process of growth.We select one mathematicalobject, the gamma function,and show how it grewin concept and in content fromthe time of Euler to the recent mathematical treatise of Bourbaki, and how, in this growth,it partook of the general development of mathematicsover the past two and a quarter centuries.Of the so-called "higher mathematical functions,"the gamma functionis undoubtedly the most funda- mental. It is simple enough for juniors in college to meet but deep enough to have called forthcontributions from the finestmathematicians. And it is suffi- ciently compact to allow its profileto be sketched within the space of a brief essay. The year 1729 saw the birthof the gamma functionin a correspondencebe- tween a Swiss mathematician in St. Petersburgand a German mathematician in Moscow. The former:Leonhard Euler (1707-1783), then 22 years of age, but to become a prodigious mathematician,the greatest of the 18th century. The latter: Christian Goldbach (1690-1764), a savant, a man of many talents and in correspondencewith the leading thinkersof the day. As a mathematicianhe was somethingof a dilettante,yet he was a man who bequeathed to the future a problemin the theoryof numbersso easy to state and so difficultto prove that even to this day it remains on the mathematical horizon as a challenge. The birthof the gamma functionwas due to the mergingof several mathe- matical streams. The firstwas that of interpolationtheory, a very practical subject largely the product of English mathematiciansof the 17th centurybut which all mathematiciansenjoyed dipping into fromtime to time. The second stream was that of the integralcalculus and of the systematicbuilding up of the formulasof indefiniteintegration, a process which had been going on steadily for many years. A certain ostensiblysimple problem of interpolationarose and was bandied about unsuccessfullyby Goldbach and by Daniel Bernoulli (1700- 1784) and even earlierby James Stirling(1692-1770). The problemwas posed to Euler. Euler announced his solution to Goldbach in two letters which were to be the beginningof an extensive correspondencewhich lasted the duration of Goldbach's life.The firstletter dated October 13, 1729 dealt with the interpola- tion problem, while the second dated January 8, 1730 dealt with integration and tied the two together.Euler wrote Goldbach the merestoutline, but within a year he published all the details in an articleDe progressionibustranscendent- ibus seu quarum terminigenerales algebraice dari nequeunt.This article can now be found reprintedin Volume I14 of Euler's Opera Omnia. Since the interpolationproblem is the easier one, let us begin with it. One of the simplest sequences of integerswhich leads to an interestingtheory is 1, 1+2, 1+2+3, 1+2+3+4, * . These are the triangularnumbers, so called because theyrepresent the numberof objects whichcan be placed in a triangular array of various sizes. Call the nth one T.. There is a formulafor T. which is learned in school algebra: T.= In(n+1). What, precisely,does this formulaaccomplish? In the firstplace, it simplifies This content downloaded on Fri, 15 Mar 2013 19:12:00 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 1959] LEONHARD EULER S INTEGRAL 851 computation by reducinga large numberof additions to three fixedoperations: one of addition, one of multiplication,and one of division.Thus, instead of add- ing the firsthundred integers to obtain T0oo0we can compute Tloo= I(100)(100+1) = 5050. Secondly, even though it doesn't make literal sense to ask for,say, the sum of the first51 integers,the formulafor T. produces an answer to this. For whatever it is worth,the formulayields T51= (5 )(5I+1) = 17k. In this way, the formulaextends the scope of the originalproblem to values of the variable other than those for which it was originallydefined and solves the problem of interpolatingbetween the known elementaryvalues. This type of question, one which asks foran extensionof meaning,cropped up frequentlyin the 17th and 18th centuries.Consider, for instance, the algebra of exponents.The quantity am is definedinitially as the product of m successive a's. This definitionhas meaningwhen m is a positive integer,but what would a5l be? The product of 5' successive a's? The mysteriousdefinitions a'=1, am/n = /am, a-" = l/am which solve this enigma and which are employed so fruit- fully in algebra were writtendown explicitlyfor the firsttime by Newton in 1676. They are justifiedby a utilitywhich derives fromthe fact that the defini- tion leads to continuous exponential functionsand that the law of exponents am an =am+n becomes meaningfulfor all exponents whetherpositive integersor not. Other problems of this type proved harder. Thus, Leibnitz introduced the notation dn forthe nth iterate of the operation of differentiation.Moreover, he identifiedd-l with f and d-n with the iteratedintegral. Then he tried to breathe some sense into the symboldn when n is any real value whatever. What, indeed, is the 5'th derivative of a function?This question had to wait almost two cen- turies fora satisfactoryanswer. THE FACTORIALS n: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 n !: 1 2 6 24 120 720 5040 40,320 ... FIG. 1 INTELLIGENCE TEST Question:What numbershould be insertedin the lowerline halfway betweenthe upper5 and 6? Euler's Answer:287.8852 *v. Hadamard'sAnswer: 280.3002 * v But to returnto our sequence of triangularnumbers. If we change the plus signs to multiplication signs we obtain a new sequence: 1, 1 *2, 1 *2.3, * * * . This is the sequence of factorials.The factorialsare usually abbreviated 1!, 2!, 3!, . and the firstfive are 1, 2, 6, 24, 120. They growin size very rapidly. The number 100! if writtenout in full would have 158 digits. By contrast, T1oo=5050 has a This content downloaded on Fri, 15 Mar 2013 19:12:00 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 852 LEONHARD EULER S INTEGRAL [December mere four digits. Factorials are omnipresentin mathematics; one can hardly open a page of mathematicalanalysis withoutfinding it strewnwith them. This being the case, is it possible to obtain an easy formulafor computing the fac- torials? And is it possible to interpolate between the factorials? What should 5 ! be? (See Fig. 1.) This is the interpolationproblem which led to the gamma function,the interpolationproblem of Stirling,of Bernoulli, and of Goldbach. As we know, these two problems are related, forwhen one has a formulathere is the possibilityof insertingintermediate values into it. And now comes the surprisingthing. There is no, in fact there can be, no formulafor the factorials which is of the simple type found for Tn. This is implicitin the very title Euler chose forhis article.Translate the Latin and we have On transcendentalprogres- sions whosegeneral term cannot be expressedalgebraically. The solutionto factorial interpolationlay deeper than "mere algebra." Infiniteprocesses were required. In orderto appreciate a little betterthe problem confrontingEuler it is use- ful to skip ahead a bit and formulateit in an up-to-date fashion: finda reason- ably simple functionwhich at the integers 1, 2, 3, - * - takes on the factorial values 1, 2, 6, . - a . Now today, a functionis a relationshipbetween two sets of numberswherein to a numberof one set is assigned a numberof the second set. What is stressedis the relationshipand not the nature of the rules whichserve to determinethe relationship.To help students visualize the functionconcept in its full generality,mathematics instructorsare accustomed to draw a curve full of twists and discontinuities.The more of these the more general the functionis supposed to be. Given, then, the points (1,1), (2, 2), (3, 6), (4, 24), * * * and adopting the point of view wherein "function"is what we have just said, the problemof interpolationis one of findinga curve which passes throughthe given points.
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