Pollock's conjectures

Pollock's conjectures are two closely related unproven conjectures in additive number theory. They were first stated in 1850 by Sir Frederick Pollock, better known as a lawyer and politician, but also a contributor of papers on mathematics to the Royal Society. These conjectures are a possible extension of the Fermat polygonal number theorem to three-dimensional figurate numbers, also called polyhedral numbers.

• Pollock tetrahedral numbers conjecture: Every positive integer is the sum of at most five tetrahedral numbers.
• Pollock octahedral numbers conjecture: Every positive integer is the sum of at most seven octahedral numbers.

References

• Dickson, L. E. (June 7, 2005). History of the Theory of Numbers, Vol. II: Diophantine Analysis. Dover. pp. 22–23. ISBN 0-486-44233-0.
• Frederick Pollock (1850). "On the extension of the principle of Fermat's theorem on the polygonal numbers to the higher order of series whose ultimate differences are constant. With a new theorem proposed, applicable to all the orders". Abstracts of the Papers Communicated to the Royal Society of London 5: 922–924. JSTOR 111069.

External links

• Weisstein, Eric W., "Pollock's Conjecture", MathWorld.