Nick Percival’s Eureka Story
| Article | |
|---|---|
| Title | Nick Percival’s Eureka Story |
| Author(s) | Nick Percival |
| Published in | Beyond Mainstream |
| Date | 2018-12-17 |
| Subject area | Physics |
| Topics | mathematics, imaginary numbers |
Read online | Read the full article |
Archived copy | Archived version |
| Retrieved | 2026-07-23 |
"Nick Percival's Eureka Story" is an autobiographical article by Nick Percival published on 17 December 2018 on Beyond Mainstream.
Percival dates his habit of mind to ninth grade in 1956, when his mathematics teacher remarked that we do not know what the square root of minus one is. Taking this to mean nobody knew, he spent a week's vacation on it — approaching the problem physically, as measuring sticks laid end to end with a minus sign meaning a reversal of direction, and looking for a number that multiplied by itself gave −1. The article presents this literal-minded insistence on physical meaning as the disposition behind his later work on relativity.