please, some help on the 36-officers problem

[marlon]

Can anyone explain me the problem of the 36-officers and the relation to finite fields ???

References to other explainatory website-links are also very usefull.

[mathman]

I believe you would get more responses if you actually described the problem. I'm sure most of us don't know what the 36-officers problem is.

[gravenewworld]

Euler's famous 36 officers problem basically asks the question "Is it possible to construct mutually orthogonal latin squares of order 6?" The answer is no there does not exist a pair. It was shown by brute force by G. Tarry. I remember learning about this problem in my combinatorics class. As for the relation to finite fields, I'm not sure, I'll email one of my professors.

[Hurkyl]

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=36628

Please don't double post. (You should be able to delete a thread you created if you made a mistake)