Euler's Contribution to Number Theory

Author(s): Peter Shiu

Source: The Mathematical Gazette, Vol. 91, No. 522 (Nov., 2007), pp. 453-461
Published by: The Mathematical Association
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40378418
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EULERS CONTRIBUTION TO NUMBER THEORY 453

Euler's contribution to number t

PETER SHIU

1. Introduction

Individuals who excel in mathematics have always enjoyed a well

deserved high reputation. Nevertheless, a few hundred years back, as an
honourable occupation with means to social advancement, such an individual
would need a patron in order to sustain the creative activities over a long
period. Leonhard Euler (1707-1783) had the fortune of being supported
successively by Peter the Great (1672-1725), Frederich the Great (1712-
1786) and the Great Empress Catherine (1729-1791), enabling him to
become the leading mathematician who dominated much of the eighteenth
century. In this note celebrating his tercentenary, I shall mention his work in
number theory which extended over some fifty years. Although it makes up
only a small part of his immense scientific output (it occupies only four
volumes out of more than seventy of his complete work) it is mostly through
his research in number theory that he will be remembered as a
mathematician, and it is clear that arithmetic gave him the most satisfaction
and also much frustration. Gazette readers will be familiar with many of his
results which are very well explained in H. Davenport's famous text [1], and
those who want to know more about the historic background, together with
the rest of the subject matter itself, should consult A. Weil's definitive
scholarly work [2], on which much of what I write is based. Some of the
topics being mentioned here are also set out in Euler's own Introductio in
analysin infinitorum (1748), which has now been translated into English [3].
Number theory, as a branch of mathematics concerned with the
properties of whole numbers, can be said to date from the discoveries of
Fermât (1601-1665). There is little doubt that he had proofs for many of the
results discovered by him, but he did not publish them and was content with
private communications with other interested scientists. It was thus left to
Euler to set out the proofs for the mathematical community, and it will not
be out of place here to quote G. H. Hardy: 'In number theory, proof is
everything!' Euler took up Fermat's writing in 1730 and found many
interesting statements concerning primes and sums of squares. As Weil [2]
put it, 'He had discovered a topic which was to haunt him all his life.'
Besides admiration from Lagrange (1736-1813) and Goldbach (1690-1764),
there was not much enthusiasm for Euler's research in arithmetic among
fellow scientists. Even his old friend Daniel Bernoulli (1700-1782)
sometimes spoke disparagingly about such work - for example, when
replying to a letter from Nicolas Fuss (1755-1826) reporting on what Euler
had discovered, his less than enthusiastic reply might be paraphrased as 'So
what! Why does the great man pay so much attention to prime numbers?
Personally I value more your research into the strength of beams.'
In the following I shall, of course, make use of the congruence notation
introduced by Gauss (1777-1855). However, readers should remember that

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 454 THE MATHEMATICAL GAZETTE

this vital tool, which not only sim

leads at once to the abstract notion
to Euler. Again even the useful Lege
of a number, which would have sim
his work, was introduced only tow
Incidentally, on the notion of cong
fact that there are only a finite nu
arithmetic to a modulus m means th
satisfied by every number in that a
these relations in ordinary arithme
Euler's increasing awareness that in
individual integers, but with what w

2. The Fermat-Euler theorem

Let us begin with Fermat's 'Little Theorem', which was given in a letter
dated 18 October 1640 and states that, for a prime /?, the congruence aF = a
(mod/?) is satisfied by every a. This was generalised by Euler in 1760 to the
famous Fermat-Euler theorem

a*m) = 1 (modm),
where (p (m) counts the numbers up to m which are coprime with m, and the
congruence is satisfied by every such number a; this important result forces
us to consider the multiplicative group of integers modulo m, and indeed
marks the beginning of group theory. Fermât discovered his theorem from
'additive' considerations involving the binomial expansion. More
specifically, all the binomial coeffcients in the expansion

(a + If = d + 11 +<*<p
XW(íV~*
are multiples of /?, and the required result follows by induction on n. This
argument was presented by Euler in 1742; it can also be established using
the 'multinomial formula', as Leibniz (1646-1716) did. Even Fermât would
be aware that the result is related to what is now known as Lagrange's
theorem, namely that the order of a group is a multiple of the order of any
subgroup. Taking a to be prime to p, if we divide the numbers I, a, a2, ...
by p the remainders must repeat themselves, leading to the smallest positive
n such that an = 1 (mod/?). Consequently the p - 1 congruence classes
modulo p fall into disjoint sets each having n elements, so that n must divide
/7-1. This is the multiplicative proof obtained by Euler around 1750, and
he says that it is the better one since the argument easily generalises to the
Fermat-Euler theorem. Elementary number theory texts give the following
simpler proof: Let h = 0 (m), and take a reduced residue system b\, b2, • • •»
bh modulo m, that is a collection of h incongruent numbers coprime with m.
If a is coprime with m then abu ab2, ... , abh also form such a system, and
therefore ab\ab2... abh = b\b2... bh (modm). Cancellation of the common
factor b\b2... bh then delivers the required result ah = 1 (modm). This

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EULER'S CONTRIBUTION TO NUMBER THEORY 455

elegant proof eluded Euler, Lagrange, Legendre (

Gauss; it was given in 1806 by Ivory. Again we need t
that, in those days, there was no such concept as a
notion of an integer reciprocal might be as difficult as
number'. Euler realised the significance of his 'toti
number theory, but he seemed to have overlooke
žd\n</>(d) = n, which was first noted by Gauss.

3. Sums of two and four squares; quadratic forms

The identity

{a2 + b2)(c2 + d2) = (ac + bd)2 + {ad - be

is generally attributed to Fibonacci (11707-1240?), wh
for it and instead gave an elaborate proof in 1202; th
that Diophantus (circa 250) was aware of it, and it mi
even earlier. As far as elementary number theory is co
is vital in the study of the set

W = {1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 13, ... }

of numbers which are representable as a sum of two s
it shows that the set is ' multiplicad vely closed'. S
congruent to 0 or 1 (mod 4), numbers conguent to 3 (m
In fact a necessary and sufficient condition for w
written as w = AB2, where A is free of prime div
(mod 4). In other words, if a prime p = 4k + 3 di
must divide w to an exact even power. This condition w
Dutch mathematician Albert Girard (1595-1632) in
Fermât a little later. Following from the identity, the
to show that every prime p congruent to 1 (mod 4) is
of two squares; this was clearly stated by Ferm
emphasised the uniqueness of the two squares involved
know of are those published by Euler, and they inclu
which involves the quadratic character of -1 modulo
that a is a quadratic residue, or non-residue, modulo a
whether the congruence x2 = a (mod/?) is soluble, or n
After a seven-year campaign to establish all th
concerning the set W, Euler was able to write to Goldb
'at last found a conclusive proof . Concerning the quadr
Davenport [1] wrote 'The fact [...] seems to have been f
after repeated failure, in about 1749, whereas he
criterion until 1755. Lagrange, in 1773, pointed ou
simple way of giving explicitly the solution of the co
soluble [using Wilson's theorem].'
Writing P = (p - 1)/ 2 for an odd prime p, it fo
Fermat's theorem that ap = ±1 (mod p) for every a co
quadratic residue, so that there exists x such that

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 456 THE MATHEMATICAL GAZETTE

ap = x2P = xp~x = 1 (mod/?),

quadratic non-residue then we nee
is tricky since it makes use of the f
cannot have more solutions than
theorem which was formally stated
is that a is a quadratic residue, or
ambiguous sign in the above is
particular, the quadratic character
depends only on the parity of P.
residue, depending on whether p =
In much of Euler's investigations
problem on primes of the form M
was discovering, not only what
reciprocity, but at the same tim
multiplicative group ... it is fascinat
and more conceptual approach to nu
was an empiricist not much given t
first person to consider binary qu
more sophisticated level later by L
significance of the notion of a prim
to be said that his proof of the exis
Euler could make no progress on t
that every number is a sum of f
discovered the famous identity

(¿ + b2 + C2 + ¿2)(p2 + q2 +
where

A = ap + bq + cr + ds, B = aq - bp - cs + dr,
C = ar + bs - cp - dq, D = as - br + cq - dq.
Armed with this, his problem now was to show that primes are sums of four
squares. This eluded him and the prize for the four-squares theorem was
claimed in 1770 by Lagrange, who gave much due credit to Euler. His
earlier failure may perhaps be explained by his investing too much effort in
trying to show that a prime can be decomposed as a sum of two members of
W, instead of taking on the problem more directly. With hindsight this was
bad tactics because, rather than being helpful, the rich structure within W
may actually obscure the interrelationship between all four squares. Euler
simplified Lagrange's proof, thereby also simplifying the argument for the
two squares case, and these are the elegant proofs that we find in textbooks.
Indeed, when reading them without knowing the background story, one is
left wondering how, after developing all the tools, Euler could have missed
the four-squares theorem in the first place.
Concerning Fermat's notorious 'Last Theorem' that x" + y" = f has
no non-trivial solutions if n > 2, Euler announced to Goldbach in 1753 that
he had dealt with the cases n = 4 and 3. The solution for the more
interesting case n = 3 is based on the theory of the form x2 + 3V2; the

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EULER'S CONTRIBUTION TO NUMBER THEORY 457

method works because the field Q(V^3) happens t

algorithm, and he then tried to apply the new idea
Weil [2] put it, 'A momentous event had taken place
had entered number theory - through the back-d
Gauss to set things right, of course.
Incidentally, there is now a new proof of Ferm
representation of a prime p = 1 (mod 4) as a sum
does not make use of the quadratic character of
Roger Heath-Brown [4], who constructed two involut
solutions of p = x2 + 4yz, and a parity argument then
of a solution with y = z. The beautiful proof has sin
sentence-proof by Don Zagier in [5].

4. Pell's equation and continued fractions

Euler's interest in Tell's equation' x2 - Ny1 = 1
1730 - as it is well known the name Pell was attached
under a misapprehension when he published a short p
equation on the subject, including a description of B
was aware that the solutions supply good approximatio
A real number a has the continued fraction expans
1
a = a0 +
ax +

a2 +...

where the partial quotients a¡ are integers, positive for / > 0. We wri
a = [a0, fli, ... ], and the truncated expression at the ith step is then
rational number /?//#/ called the /th convergent for a. Although some fac
on such expansions were known to, and used by, the Indian astronom
Aryabhata (circa 450), Bombelli (1526-1573) and Huygens (1629-1695),
is clear that Euler was quite unaware of their work. In fact Euler was the
first person to give a general account of the subject, which initially appeare
in his correspondence in connection with Riccati's differential equation. H
soon became interested in them for their own sake, observing that rationa
numbers have finite continued fractions obtained by a process identical wi
the Euclidean algorithm, that periodic continued fractions represen
quadratic irrationals, and noting also that the expansion of any real numbe
into a continued fraction supplies the best rational approximations for tha
number. Besides deriving the iterative formulae for p¡ and q¿ in terms of th
partial quotients at he also gave 'Euler's rule' for the explicit expressions fo
them as sums of certain products formed out of these a¡. It was natural fo
him to compare the approximations to \ÍÑ from his new-found theory t
those obtained from the solutions to Pell's equation, and he discovered th
the two algorithms are in fact identical. It was inevitable that he als
discovered the 'palindromic' property of the expansion, namely that the
expansion has the form

y/Ñ = [a0, au a2, a3, ... , tf3, a2, au2a0\ ,

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 458 THE MATHEMATICAL GAZETTE

where the bar indicates the periodi

comes from pi - Nqj = (-l)k + l, wh
even then we can replace it by 2k +
While he drew attention to these p
back up his findings by anything
example, he could have easily est
partial quotients for a given qua
periodic, but he failed to mention t
these was eventually first taken up
In 1737 Euler found that the number e has the continued fraction
expansions = [2, 1, 2, 1, 1, 4, 1, 1, 6, ... ], where the numbers 2, 4,
6, ... are separated by two Is each time, and he also found that, for any
positive integer k,

e-¿¡^\ = [k, 3k, 5k,...].

We remind readers that, to this day, we know practically nothing about the
continued fractions for n, and very little for algebraic numbers, apart from
quadratic irrationals. Thus, we do not even know whether the sequence of
partial quotients for n, or i/2, is bounded or not.

5. Partitio Numerorum

In 1740 Philippe Naudé (1684-1745) wrote to Euler asking in how

many ways can a given integer be written as a sum of distinct integers.
Euler saw at once that the key to such questions lay in the consideration of
suitable formal power series as generating functions, and that such series
may also have product representations. He then discovered that the
reciprocals of such functions are power series with exponents being
quadratics in the summation index. Euler had thus introduced the theory of
partitions, which he named partitio numerorum, as a topic in number theory.
He realised that the more fundamental problem is concerned with
unrestricted partitions - that is the study of p (n), the number of ways of
writing n as a sum of positive integers, regardless of order and with
repetitions allowed. This is because the generating function associated with
p (n) has the simplest product representation, namely

¿ />(«)*" = f[(i -**)"',

n=0 *=1

the reciprocal of which ha

ļļ(l - x) = 1 - x - x
k= 1

The series here may be written as yZ(-l)nxni3n + l)/2, summed over all the
integers n; it is the first appearance in the literature of what is now known as
a theta function. Thus Euler had discovered his famous 'pentagonal number
theorem', which was then used to derive an interesting recurrence formula

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EULERS CONTRIBUTION TO NUMBER THEORY 459

for the computation of p(n) from known value

However, it was almost ten years before he sent a p
Goldbach. He took the simplest approach, namely a
out of the product and skilfully arranging the terms
was left to Jacobi (1804-1851) to show that a ful
matters lay in the theory of theta-functions and of mo
the theorem can be considered as a corollary of J
identity:

n«l - *2")(1 + *2n-'z){\ + *2"-'z-')} = I x"\".

n = 1 n = -oo

Indeed many
the theory of
involving Ta
integration. O
combinatoria
graphs. Inc
anticipating J
method for p
fourth power

6. Analytic nu
By analytic
functions of
is generally a
by Dirichlet
respectively. H
processes in o
has a just clai
power series t
see how closel
ordinary [i.e.
repugnant th
we shall see, E
number theor
In the follow

where s is a r
and L(s) are
(correspondin
the matter of
than the man
Yes, here and
the Latin pro

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460 THE MATHEMATICAL GAZETTE

For example, many of his statements

involve divergent series; however, whe
they make sense and are correct, but
can easily be adapted and justified by o
One of Euler's most sensational early
Ç (2m); indeed it is this result which es
his contemporaries. We need not say m
that he undertook extensive numerical
known as the 'Euler-MacLaurin summa
also rediscovered the 'Bernoulli num
number theory was not to emerge unt
took ten years trying to put his concl
others and also himself. Here we shall
discoveries related to £ (s) and L (s).
Euler was able to give an immediate
partition of numbers because he had alr
and their product representations. Besid
exponential and trigonometric functio
interested in the interpolation of fun
by formulae being given only at integer
investigation is his theory of the gamm
textbooks. With such experience and
have also tried rather hard to fathom t
which we still know practically nothin
Euler had discovered results which are
functional equations of the Riemann ze
L-function L(s). For a hundred years h
forgotten until Riemann resurrected t
more here.

Meanwhile, in contemplating the rel

product, Euler made the other moment
the famous Eulerian product for £ (s):

an identity in s relating a sum over al

the primes p. Nowadays we say that the
the fundamental theorem of arithmetic
a composite number into primes is ess
ourselves that the relevance and signif
itself were brought to our notice only
deduces that the sum £ 1 Ip is infinite
harmonic series J,lln\ Since he knew
about logAf, he meant that Y,p<n^I P
measure, he also found the product re

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EULER'S CONTRIBUTION TO NUMBER THEORY 46 1

L(l) = tt/4 is also the value of the product 11(1 ± 1 /p)"1

is determined by p ± 1 =0 (mod 4), and he deduces th
X 1 I p, when summed over p congruent to 1 or 3 (mod
both 'infinite and of the same order'.

7. A great mathematician
So how good was Euler the mathematician? Three hundred years later,
perhaps even mere mortals can utter some form of an assessment.
Mathematicians usually say that there are only three all-time greats:
Archimedes (2877-212 BC), Newton (1642-1727) and Gauss, so that Euler
failed to get into the medals. However, many will also award him a special
prize for sheer tenacity and industry. Even from the short account given
here, it is clear that he never abandoned a problem after it had once aroused
his curiosity. Indeed he would go back to it again and again over many
years, trying to find a proof, or a more natural one. Euler also seemed to
care little whether he or someone else made the discovery - he would be
delighted to do more just to either clarify, or improve on, his own or
someone else's theorem, as exemplified in the four-squares theorem of
Lagrange. Incidentally Weil [2] wrote that 'Much if not all of Lagrange' s
work is based on that of Euler; this applies in particular to his contributions
to number theory.' There are, of course, famous problems that eluded Euler
all his life; for example the law of quadratic reciprocity, which he himself
had formulated and he would dearly love to have seen just one of the many
proofs.
In 1745 his old teacher Johann Bernoulli (1667-1748), not a modest
man as a rule, addressed him as mathematicorum princeps, the first person
to be honoured with such a title - Lagrange and Gauss were the only two
successors to the title.

References
1. H. Davenport, The Higher Arithmetic (6th edn), Cambridge University
Press (1998).
2. André Weil, Number Theory: an approach through history; From
Hammurrapi to Legendre, Birkhäuser (1983).
3. L. Euler, Introduction to Analysis of the Infinite, Book I; (translated by
John D. Blanton) Springer- Verlag (1988).
4. D. R. Heath-Brown, Fermat's two squares theorem, Invariant (Journal
of the Undergraduate Society of students of Mathematics at Oxford
University) (1984) pp. 3-5.
5. D. Zagier, A one-sentence proof that every prime p = 1 (mod 4) is a
sum of two squares, Amer. Math. Monthly, 97 (1990) p. 144.
PETER SHIU

353 Fulwood Road, Sheffield SW 3BQ

e-mail: p.shiu@yahoo.co.uk

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