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Equal Sums of Like Powers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2009

E. M. Wright
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics, University of Aberdeen.
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In this note all small latin letters denote rational integers. We write k ≧ 1, s ≧ 1 and consider the simultaneous equations

A solution of these equations is said to be non-trivial if no set {xiu} is a permutation of another set {xiv}. In 1851 Prouhet constructed a non-trivial solution of these equations with j = sk and Lehmer has recently found a parametric solution for the same j. Here I give two alternative elementary proofs of Lehmer's result. Lehmer's own proof depends on the ideas of generating functions, exponentials, differentiation, matrices, and complex roots of unity, though all at a fairly simple level. One of my proofs requires only the factor theorem for a polynomial and the other only the multinomial theorem for a positive integral index.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Edinburgh Mathematical Society 1949

References

page 138 note 1 Comptes Rendus (Paris), 33 (1851), 225.Google Scholar

page 138 note 2 Scripta Math. 13 (1947), 3741.Google Scholar

page 138 note 3 Dickson's, History of the Theory of Numbers II, chap. 24, lists 65 articles on this topic between 1878 and 1920.Google Scholar

page 138 note 4 Mehrgradige Gleichungen (Groningen 1944), 7190.Google Scholar

page 138 note 5 Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 54 (1948), 755757.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 139 note 1 Quart. Jour. of Math., 41 (1910), 145.Google Scholar

page 141 note 1 Here again we use the multinomial theorem, so that the two proofs of Theorem 2 do not differ greatly.