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Edward Kasner

Edward Kasner (1878 - 1955) was an American mathematician.

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 nephew, Milton Sirotta, who in turn coined the word "googol." A googol is 10 raised to the 100th power (i.e., a 1 followed immediately by a hundred zeros.)