# Proof by "accident"

Are there any examples in the history of mathematics of a mathematical proof that was found by accident, in the sence that in the effort of proving it, ending up proving something intuitively different? Of course, I do not mean trying to prove that a proposition holds and proving that indeed it does not. Are there any branch of mathematics born as a result of such an "accident"?

• Let's just move this to math history, it doesn't needs to be closed Aug 26 '21 at 10:57
• I do not know about maths. But in physics happens all the time, somebody writes the equation to explain a phenomena and other things pop out that turn out to be true when more experiments are performed. Aug 26 '21 at 11:49
• Does nonEuclidean Geometry count? Way I heard it, some fellow tried to prove the Parallel Postulate and discovered a whole new "universe," so to speak. Aug 26 '21 at 13:37
• – nwr
Aug 28 '21 at 1:16
• I am going to go against the current and say that there were no such "accidents". There were unexpected crossovers, where research in one area led to a breakthrough in another, but the author(s) still had to invest attention and effort to branch out, the result was no accident. Poincare's founding of algebraic topology, that grew out of his work on differential equations, is a typical example. And so were the study of conic sections, Galois groups, Riemann surfaces and other supposed "accidents". Aug 30 '21 at 5:09

One can count here numerous attempts to prove well known open conjectures which resulted in proving weaker and seemingly different statements. For example, Tao's "approximation" of Collatz problem is interesting by itself but is a result of an attempt to solve the problem, Moore's theorem about Folner sets in the R.Thompson group $$F$$ is a result of his attempt to resolve the amenability question for this group.