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Number Theory: conics and pythagorean triples (ancient), Fermat equation (1637), Riemann zeta function (1859) eliptic curves, transendental numbers, Fermat hypersurfaces,






Combinatorics: tic-tac-toe (ancient Egypt(?)) (The game of nim (ancient China(?))), Pascal's triangle (China and Europe 17th), Catalan numbers (mid 19th century), (Fibonacci sequence (12th century; probably ancient), Kirkman's schoolgirl problem (1850), surreal numbers (1969), alternating sign matrices (1982)



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130 Answers 130

In modal logic there is a particularly simple formula, called McKinsey formula: ◻⋄p→⋄◻p. It is so simple, yet it defines a frame property which cannot be expressed in first-order logic.

Also, with the right selection of other formulas, it gives rise to frame incompleteness examples (logics that are consistent, but are not logics of any class of frames whatsoever).

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Gödel's Constructible Universe, L, is the fundamental example of inner model theory. L was the first inner model, and is the minimal one. One could argue that the point of inner model theory is to build L-like models that do things L cannot.

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Theory of Algebraically Closed Fields (ACF for short) is an important example in Model Theory. This was a motivation example to develop theory of stable and simple theories (leading, eventually, to a beautiful proof of Mordell-Lang conjecture by Ehud Hrushovski).

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(From the Wikipedia article) In cryptography, RSA (which stands for Rivest, Shamir and Adleman) is an algorithm for public-key cryptography. It is the first algorithm known to be suitable for signing as well as encryption, and was one of the first great advances in public key cryptography. RSA is widely used in electronic commerce protocols, and is believed to be secure given sufficiently long keys and the use of up-to-date implementations.

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The symmetric and alternating groups are fundamental examples in group theory, representation theory, and combinatorics.

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I think polynomials are one of the greatest inventions of humankind. Not only are they extremely flexible and come up in so many domains of math, but they've lead to interesting breakthroughs. For example, trying to find a closed formed solution to the quintic polynomial lead Galois to develop groups, right?

Answered by Dagit

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The cone of positive semidefinite matrices is a fundamental example of a convex cone which is important in convexity and for convex and semidefinite programming.

The Reuleaux triangle is the first and most famous example of a set of constant width other than the circle (or ball in higher dimensions).

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The determinant of symmetric matrix is a fundamental example of hyperbolic polynomial (it is hyperbolic with respect to any positive definite matrix). –  Petya Mar 15 '10 at 4:56

SLE - stochastic Loewner evolution (or Schramm-Loewner evolution) is a one parameter class of random planar curves. These random curves depend on a real parameter kappa, they are (almost suely) simple curves when kappa is at most 4, they fill the plane when kappa is at least 8. They are related to many planar stochastic models. Look here for more pictures.

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While the group of permutations (and permutation matrices) is probably too fundamental to be included, a mysterious, with much more yet to be understood generalization called alternating sign matrices are important in modern combinatorics. Those are square matrices with entries 1, 0 and -1 so that the non zero entries in each row and column alternate in sign and sum up tp one. There is a simple correspondence between alternating sign matrices and monotone triangles.

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Tic-Tac-Toe tends to be the starting example in combinatorial game theory, just because it's simple enough to depict the entire tree on one page yet can still be used to illustrate the standard definitions and notation.

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yes, perhaps along with nim. –  Gil Kalai Nov 21 '09 at 21:07

In $C^*$-algebras, the Cuntz Algebra is a fundamental example of a separable unital $C^*$-algebra. Its appearance has reshaped much of the theory of $C^*$-algebras.

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The image of a torus embedded in $\mathbb{R}^3$ tilted on its side is the fundamental example of Morse Theory. In some sense it shows why you should "believe" all of the Morse lemmas before you sit down to prove them.

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I think the question of whether or not $li(x) := \int_{2}^{x} \frac{dt}{\ln(t)}$ was contained in $\mathbb{C}\left(x, \ln\left(x\right)\right)$ spawned the field of galois theory of differential equations. One key question in this field, is what sort of extensions arise from adjoining solutions to a differential equation with coefficients in some ring (for example $\mathbb{C}(x)$?

In the case of the original question it can be posed as what extension arises from the differential equation $$\ln(x)y' = 1?$$

This field developed in parallel to galois theory of number fields (and other algebraic geometry, and arithmetic geometry). A good reference for the field is the aptly titled "Galois Theory of Linear Differential Equations" by Marius Van der Put and Michael Singer.

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The Newton-Raphson method. A method for finding successively better approximations to the zeroes of a real-valued function. See also this link.

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The ring of Gaussian integers Z[i] is a fundamental example of a ring of integers extending Z. Many early results in number theory were motivated by understanding and generalizing properties exhibited by Z[i] and its relationship with Z.

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The irrational rotation on the torus $\mathbb{T^2}$: $T_t (z,w) = (e^{2 \pi i \alpha }z, e^{2 \pi i \beta} w)$, where $\alpha, \beta \in \mathbb{R}, \frac{\alpha}{\beta} \notin \mathbb{Q}$. It is perhaps the first nontrivial example of an ergodic dynamical system. By considering its orbits $t \mapsto T_t (z,w)$, one gets examples of one-to-one immersions (with dense image) which are not embeddings, immersed submanifolds which are not closed/regular submanifolds, Lie subgroups which are not closed subgroups, non-Hausdorff quotient space and similar phenomena.

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Ravi Vakil gives interesting examples in algebraic geometry: "The existence of some of these pathologies is ``common knowledge'', but I had never known what they were.".

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Some of the examples above have indeed shaped whole "disciplines" but others, as striking as they are, are less sweeping in scope.

For me, a very important and thought provoking example, and historically important for a variety of reasons is the Tutte graph. This graph shows a 3-valent 3-polytopal graph which has no hamiltonian circuit. This example, in particular, doomed attempts to prove the 4-color theorem based on ideas related to hamiltonian circuits.



It inspired a great variety of conjectures and work related to hamiltonian circuits for polytopes.

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A very nice example. It is true that the examples vary in terms of importance and also in terms of how large we understand the concept of an "example". –  Gil Kalai Dec 6 '09 at 6:49


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Borromean rings


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