Research notes on every problem, and a library of the papers behind them. Built from the open erdos repository.
Updated
Claim. Theorem 1 of Bruck and Ryser's paper states that no finite projective plane of order exists when or and the squarefree part of has a prime factor ; equivalently, a plane of order exists only if is a sum of two integer squares. The proof turns a plane of order into a - incidence matrix of order with , where has on the diagonal and elsewhere, and applies the Hasse–Minkowski theory of rational equivalence of quadratic forms to . For Problem 723 the theorem gives the answer yes for every excluded order: , , , , and every further that is not a sum of two squares has no plane, so none of these orders is a counterexample. The site records the theorem as the condition that such must be a sum of two squares and notes that it rules out and .
Covers. Every order or that is not a sum of two squares: no plane of such an order exists, so the problem's implication holds for those . It says nothing about the other orders that are not prime powers; the smallest of them, , is excluded by Lam, Thiel and Swiercz's search, and is the first order the problem leaves undecided.
Acceptance. Refereed: Canad. J. Math. 1 (1949), no. 1, 88–93; the
issue is dated February 1949, and the page is dated to the first day of that
month. The site's curator records the theorem under [BrRy49] while labeling
the problem FALSIFIABLE, which credits the partial result without settling
the problem, so the page lists no reviewed evidence. The library card
records the paper's theorems; the proof has not been reconstructed or
independently reviewed in this corpus.