Googol and Googolplex

Many of us might not have heard these terms, as these are not the ones that often occur in our lives. All of us know about large numbers, which are those that exceed a million. Now, these two terms were invented to name the largest numbers.

We’re going to address Googol and Googolplex in this article separately so that we have a better idea of what these terms are and how these were invented.

Edward Kasner, an American mathematician, asked his nine-year-old nephew Milton Sirotta what he would call a number with 100 zeros. He thought it should be named something equally silly as the question itself. He took a little time and then replied “Googol” and further went on to invent “Googolplex”, a number that has endless zeros or can be written as 10googol. Therefore, both these terms, Googol and Googolplex, were created by a kid.

It is a mathematical term used to describe a number that has a hundred zeros after a single digit. It is denoted as 10100 in power since writing a hundred zeros would be quite exhausting. It has no significance in particular but can be used while comparing it with other large numbers.

Edward Kasner popularised this term “Googol” in his book “Mathematics and the Imagination,” published in 1940.

A googolplex is a mathematical number 10googol, or equivalent to . It is written as 1 followed by 10100 zeros; in simple words, it is 1 followed by googol zeros.

Earlier, its definition differed as it was described as 1 followed by writing zeros until you get tired. He later thought of giving it a more organized and uniform definition since different individuals get tired at different times.

Even after having no special significance of Googol and Googolplex in mathematics, they are still an exciting subject to immerse into. It feels fantastic to find terms for numbers that would probably take a lifetime and more to write in a notebook.