History
The puzzle was originally proposed in 1848 by the chess player Max Bezzel, and over the years, many mathematicians, including Gauss, have worked on this puzzle and its generalized n-queens problem. The first solutions were provided by Franz Nauck in 1850. Nauck also extended the puzzle to n-queens problem (on an n×n board—a chessboard of arbitrary size). In 1874, S. Günther proposed a method of finding solutions by using determinants, and J.W.L. Glaisher refined this approach.
Edsger Dijkstra used this problem in 1972 to illustrate the power of what he called structured programming. He published a highly detailed description of the development of a depth-first backtracking algorithm.2
Read more about this topic: Eight Queens Puzzle
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“The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)
“The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.”
—William James (1842–1910)