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Source: New York Times
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For more than 2,500 years, mathematicians have been obsessed with solving for x. The story of their struggle to find the “roots” — the solutions — of increasingly complicated equations is one of the great epics in the history of human thought.

And yet, through it all, there’s been an irritant, a nagging little thing that won’t go away: the solutions often involve square roots of negative numbers. Such solutions were long derided as “sophistic” or “fictitious” because they seemed nonsensical on their face.

My girlfriend showed me this article – it’s a really good one and definitely a suggested read if you want a little closure about all that imaginary number stuff.

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