There exists a 47 society,
[4] an outgrowth of a movement started at
Pomona College,
California,
USA, which propagates the belief (or, to some, the
inside joke) that the number forty-seven occurs in nature with noticeably higher frequency than other natural numbers, that it is the quintessential random number.
[5] The origin of 47
lore at Pomona appears to be a
mathematical proof, written in
1964 by Professor
Donald Bentley, which supposedly demonstrated that all numbers are equal to 47. However, the proof mentioned above was used by Professor Bentley as a "joke proof" to introduce his students to the concept of mathematical proofs, and is not mathematically valid.
Joe Menosky, who graduated from Pomona College in
1979 and went on to become one of the story writers of
Star Trek: The Next Generation, "infected" other Star Trek writers with it. As a result the number 47, its reverse of
74, or a multiple of 47 occurs in some way or other in almost every episode of this program and its spin-offs
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,
Star Trek: Voyager and
Star Trek: Enterprise. The number might be mentioned in the dialogue, appear on a computer screen a character is looking at, or be a substring of a larger number. Some examples are listed here:
- In Star Trek Generations, Scotty manages to beam up only 47 El-Aurians before their ship is destroyed by the energy ribbon.
- In the TNG episode "Darmok," Worf reports a particle gradient of 4/7.
- In the DS9 episode "Whispers," the planet Parada 4 has seven moons.
- In the Voyager episode "Non Sequitur," Harry Kim lives in apartment 4-G, G being the seventh letter of the alphabet. The intentionality of this reference to 47 was confirmed by Brannon Braga, the writer of that episode.[6]
From Star Trek, the 47 was carried on into modern pop culture and nowadays appears frequently in motion pictures, television shows and in music, contributing to the 47 society belief/myth.
