Charles Barkley pledges $1 million after students make maths discovery

NBA legend Charles Barkley. Image Credit: Basket Network St. Mary’s Academy in New Orleans received a $1 million pledge from former NBA star Charles Barkley after two of its students made a unique breakthrough in mathematics. Calcea Johnson and Ne’Kiya Jackson, then high-school seniors, developed a new proof of the 2,000-year-old Pythagorean theorem using trigonometry. Their work attracted attention after they presented it to the American Mathematical Society, and Barkley later saw their achievement on television. The story prompted him to support the school and the opportunities it gives students beyond the classroom.How Charles Barkley pledged $1 million after a historic maths discoveryJohnson and Jackson were students at St. Mary’s Academy when they began working on a problem that had challenged mathematicians for generations. The Pythagorean theorem describes the relationship between the three sides of a right-angled triangle and has been known since ancient times.What made the students’ work unique was the method they used. According to BasketballNetwork, they proved the theorem through trigonometry, despite a long-standing belief that such an approach could lead to circular r...