Member-only story
What’s the number of kisses?
Although we use the word “kiss” in our daily lives to express our love, we will not talk about love in this article. Let us first clarify how the word “kiss” is used in other contexts: For example, in the game of billiards, the contact between hard balls is also called a “kiss”. The number of times these balls touch each other is called the “Kiss Count”. The actual origin of the number of kisses is based on a problem that arose as a result of an argument between two scientists. One of the leading scientists in this argument was Isaac Newton, the pioneer of classical mechanics, the father of calculus, the “Last Wizard Who Ever Lived”, who had an influence on almost all branches of science, and the other was the Scottish mathematician David Gregory, one of the greatest defenders of Newton’s Principia.
In 1694, Gregory visited Newton at Cambridge University for a few days. During this visit, while the two scientists were chatting, Gregory tried to take notes in his notebook almost every word that came out of Newton’s mouth, whom he regarded as his teacher. In other words, the conversation was largely one-sided. Realizing this situation, Newton, interestingly enough, took the notebook from Gregory’s hand and wrote a few scientific statements himself, rather than talking. While writing, he came across a question in the notebook, independent of his own scientific conversations. The question is this…
