Amicable Pair/Examples/17,296-18,416/Historical Note

Historical Note on the Amicable Pair $17 \, 296$ and $18 \, 416$

The amicable pair $17 \, 296$ and $18 \, 416$ were discovered by Pierre de Fermat in $1636$.

As such, it appears that he re-discovered what had previously been discovered by the medieval Arab school.

It was, however, the second amicable pair to be known of by the Western mathematical world after $220$ and $284$, known of old.

Sources

• 1986: David Wells: Curious and Interesting Numbers ... (previous) ... (next): $17,296$
• 1997: David Wells: Curious and Interesting Numbers (2nd ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): $17,296$
• 2014: Christopher Clapham and James Nicholson: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Mathematics (5th ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): amicable numbers

• Weisstein, Eric W. "Amicable Pair." From MathWorld--A Wolfram Web Resource. https://mathworld.wolfram.com/AmicablePair.html