As a mathematician, I should teach the world a mathematical statement, which is not strictly a scientific concept. My bequest involves just seven symbols, and involves no words. It is the eighteenth-century Swiss mathematician and physicist Leonhard Euler's magical expression, linking the five most important constants in mathematics: e^{i pi} + 1 = 0.

This formula links e, the base of natural logarithms; pi, the ratio of the radius of a circle to its area; i, the square root of -1; and the binary numbers 1 and 0; into a single, compact, almost unbelievable expression. Who would have thought that two transcendental numbers (p and e), the square root of -1 (i), and the minimal set of elements needed to construct arithmetic (0 and 1), could all five be combined in such a compact, elegant, simple formula?

Almost every mathematician alive would vote for Euler's formula, as the most beautiful result in the history of mathematics. For that reason, I vote to pass it along to the next set of sentient beings.

John Casti is author of books including The One True Platonic Heaven: A Scientific Fiction on the Limits of Knowledge (buy this book from Amazon (UK) or Amazon (USA)), and Paradigms Regained: Unravelling the Mysteries of Modern Science (buy this book from Amazon (UK) or Amazon (USA)).