What name was given to the number 10 to the power of 100 (i.e. 1 followed by one hundred zeros) by nine-year-old Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner?
Edward Kasner Geometry upon a Quadric Surface"; it was published by the American Mathematical Society in 1900 in their "Transactions". Kasner is perhaps best remembered today for introducing the term "googol." In order to pique the interest of children, Kasner sought a name for a very large number: one followed by a hundred zeros. On a walk in the New Jersey Palisades with his nephews, Milton (1911-1981) and Edwin Sirotta, Kasner asked for their ideas. Nine-year-old Milton suggested "googol". In 1940, with James R. Newman, Kasner co-wrote a non-technical book surveying the field of mathematics, called "Mathematics and the Imagination" (). It
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith was introduced in 1913 in Vincent Cartwright Vickers' "The Google Book", a children's book about the Google and other fanciful creatures who live in Googleland: Aware of the word's appeal, DeBeck launched his comic strip six years later, and the "goo-goo-googly" lyrics in the 1923 song "Barney Google" focused attention on the novelty of the word. When mathematician and Columbia University professor Edward Kasner was challenged in the late 1930s to devise a name for a very large number, he asked his nine-year-old nephew, Milton Sirotta, to suggest a word. The youthful comic strip reader told Kasner to use "Google".