The city of Konigsberg in Prussia, now Kaliningrad, had seven bridges across the river Pregel linking two islands and the banks, and the people wondered if it was possible to cross all of them once and only once in a walk. In 1735 the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler, working in St Petersburg, showed that it is impossible, by reducing the problem to points and links and proving that a route exists only if at most two points have an odd number of links. His paper, presented in August 1735 and published in 1741, is regarded as the beginning of graph theory and topology, now used in networks, computing and logistics.
Before and after
- 13 March 1733Birth of Joseph Priestley
- from 10 October 1733 to 3 October 1735War of the Polish Succession
- 1734Founding of University of Göttingen
- 1735Discovery of cobalt
- 1735Euler solves the Konigsberg bridge problem and founds graph theory
- 1735Linnaeus publishes Systema Naturae
- 19 October 1735Birth of John Adams
- from 1736 to 1796Afsharid dynasty
- from 1736 to 1739Fifth Russo-Turkish War
More in Science & technology
- 15 February 1564Birth of Galileo Galilei
- 25 December 1642Birth of Isaac Newton
- 1654Magdeburg hemispheres
- October 1684Leibniz publishes the first paper on calculus
- 20 March 1727Death of Isaac Newton
- 28 August 1749Birth of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The era
This moment belongs to the Early modern world (1500 CE to 1760 CE), voyages, printing and new ideas. You can also browse everything in the 18th century.