The Seven Bridges of Königsberg

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Around the date 1763, a problem arose in Königsberg, Germany (Diestel). This problem began with a few curious citizens but soon spread to scientists and other intellects, and eventually became known as the Königsberg Bridge Problem. The town of Königsberg was cut into four separate land masses by the river Pregel (Green). At the time, Königsberg was a large trading city, valuable because of its position on the river. The prosperity of the city allowed the people to build seven bridges so citizens could traverse through these four separate land masses with ease. Each bridge had a name, which included Connecting Bridge, Honey Bridge, High Bridge, Blacksmith’s Bridge, Merchant’s Bridge, Wooden Bridge, and Green Bridge. As the story goes, citizens would often make bets among themselves to see who could pick a route that crossed each of the seven bridges only once, not yet knowing that this was an impossible feat (Paoletti). This was the beginning of the Königsberg Bridge Problem, which would soon attract the attention of many, including a man by the name of Leonard Euler. Not only would the solution to this problem set the grounds for what would become known as the graph theory, but it would also be forever remembered in the world of mathematics (Green, Paoletti, and Diestel 19).
The bridges of Königsberg posed a problem not many, if any, had ever considered before. At first, their question was, could all seven bridges be crossed once and only once in order to reach each land mass? But soon it became, could all bridges such a path take place in any network of bridges anywhere? The answer was unsure, though none could succeed in the task, until Leonard Euler, a genius of the eighteenth-century, proposed his solution to the problem...

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...00’s when curious citizens began to wonder if a path could be made across seven bridges without crossing them more than once. Many great things come from humble beginnings, and the bridges of Königsberg were definitely a humble beginning for such a thing as the graph theory.

Works Cited

Białynicki-Birula, Iwo. The bridges of Königsberg: Graph Theory. Oxford University Press,
2004. Print.
Diestel, Reinhard. Graph Theory. New York: Springer, 2000. eBook.
Green, Thomas M. “Euler’s Königsberg’s Bridges Problem”. Contra Costa College:
Mathematics Department. Contra Costa College, 2014. Web. 12 February 2014.
Paoletti, Teo. “Leonard Euler's Solution to the Konigsberg Bridge Problem”.
Mathematical Association of America (2011): n.pag. Web. 13 February 2014.
Yamaguchi, Jun-ichi. “Introduction of Graph Theory”. EMAT 6690. N.p. Web. 13 February
2014.

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