Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
In the Mathematical Games department of the Scientific American for November 1958 (12), William H. Tutte gave an entertaining account of the researches of himself and three colleagues (C. A. B. Smith, A. H. Stone, and R. L. Brooks) concerning "squaring the square." The problem is to subdivide a square into a finite number of non-overlapping smaller squares of which no two are the same size. At first suggested as impossible, a number of different solutions have been published. The first one, by Sprague in 1939 (9), showed a square divided into 55 smaller unlike squares.