The problem of Euler/Tarry revisited
The problem of Euler/Tarry revisited
复制标题
重温欧拉/塔里问题
DOI:
10.1007/s13366-020-00547-y
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发表时间:
2020
期刊:
影响因子:
--
通讯作者:
D. Betten
中科院分区:
文献类型:
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作者:
D. Betten
The problem of Euler/Tarry concerning 36 officers can be formulated in mathematical terms: Can a latin square of order 6 have an orthogonal square, or equivalently, are there 6 pairwise disjoint transversals? This was first answered (in the negative) by Tarry (1900/01). We prove the following Theorem: If a latin square of order 6 admits a reflection, i. e. an automorphism of order two which fixes the main diagonal elementwise, then it has no orthogonal square. We list the 12 isomorphism types of latin squares of order 6 and see: they all admit such a reflection. So we get a solution of the Euler problem without the tedious task of tracing the transversals.