The story
Named by Leonhard Euler after the 17th-century mathematician John Pell, whom Euler mistakenly believed to be the first to find a general solution.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Pell's equation
Today it means: The Diophantine equation x²-my²=1 for a given integer m, to be solved in integers x and y. Full definition →