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# Square of an integer

Let be positive integers such that divides . Show that

is the square of an integer.

Solution

This is a very well known problem. It first appeared in IMO held in Canberra, Australia. It even has its own Wikipedia page.

History Background

One of the organisers had sent this exercise to all professors of Number Theory to check if the exercise is original and try to solve it within hours. No one was able to do so. However, one Bulgarian student managed to solve the problem in less than hours ( his solution was fallen from the sky )  and for that he was awarded a special reward beyond the medal.

Solution

Choose integers such that Now, for fixed , out of all pairs choose the one with the lowest value of . Label . Thus, is a quadratic in . Should there be another root, , the root would satisfy: Thus, isn’t a positive integer (if it were, it would contradict the minimality condition). But , so is an integer; hence, . In addition, so that . We conclude that so that .

This construction works whenever there exists a solution for a fixed , hence is always a perfect square.

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