Bernoulli number

Meaning

Noun

• Any one of the rational numbers in a sequence of such that appears in numerous contexts, including formulae for sums of integer powers and certain power series expansions.

Origin

• Named after Swiss mathematician Jacob Bernoulli (1654–1705), who discovered the numbers independently of and at about the same time as Japanese mathematician Seki Kōwa.
• The numbers first appeared as coefficients in Bernoulli's formulae for the sum of the first n positive integers, each raised to a given power. The sequence was subsequently found in numerous other contexts.