Edward Kasner

Edward Kasner (1878 – 1955) was an American mathematician, mostly known for his role in the origin of the word googol.

Kasner studied at Columbia University under Cassius Keyser. He received his Ph.D. in 1899; his dissertation was titled The Invariant Theory of the Inversion Group.

In the late 1930s, he was once asked to come up with a name for a very large number. He outsourced this task to his nine-year-old nephew, Milton Sirotta, who in turn coined the word "googol." A googol is 10 raised to the 100th power (i.e., a 1 followed by a hundred zeros.)