The Year 2025

The year 2025 is a square number, since 2025 = 45 * 45. The adjacent years which are also squares are 1936 = 44 * 44 and 2116 = 46 * 46. There will be people who are alive for two of these three years, but nobody for all three (unless human lifespans increase dramatically for people born before 1937).

A Harshad number (aka a Niven number) is a number which is evenly divisible by the sum of its digits, eg, the number 24 is evenly divisible by 6, the sum of 2 + 4. The number 2025 is evenly divisible by 9 (the sum of 2 + 0 + 2 + 5), so it is a Harshad number. Likewise, the past three years are all evenly divisible by the sum of their respective digits: 2022, 2023 and 2024.

A sequence of four Harshad years in a row like this (2022, 2023, 2024, 2025) is quite rare. The last time this happened was a millenium ago, in the year 1014, and the next time it will happen will be in the year 3030, a millenium ahead of us.

I feel privileged to be alive at this particular time to witness this sequence!

The sequence of numbers which begin four Harshad numbers in a row are shown at the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences here.

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