Calcea Johnson and Ne’Kiya Jackson, two New Orleans, Louisiana high school students, are said to have solved a “impossible” math problem and presented it at a recent conference where they were the only high schoolers.
The two students from St. Mary’s Academy in New Orleans claimed to have proved Pythagoras’ theorem using trigonometry rather than circular logic. For over 2,000 years, countless mathematicians around the world believed it was impossible.
They recently presented their work, titled “An Impossible Proof of Pythagoras,” at the semi-annual meeting of the American Mathematical Society’s Southeastern Section at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. They were said to be the only high school students present at the event, which was attended by math researchers from various institutions and universities across the country.
“It’s really an unparalleled feeling, honestly, because there’s just nothing like being able to do something that people don’t think young people can do,” Johnson told WWLTV. “A lot of times you see this stuff, you don’t see kids like us doing it.”
The 2 high school seniors said it wouldn’t have been possible without the encouragement of their teachers, who instilled in them their school’s slogan ‘No Excellence Without Hard Labor.’
“We have really great teachers,” Jackson added.
Moreover, Johnson and Jackson are planning to go to college and get their STEM degrees, which are environmental engineering and biochemistry.