Importance of Bernoulli Numbers

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I'm writing a research paper on the foundations of computing. Supposedly Ada Lovelace wrote an algorithm to find Bernoulli numbers. It sounds cool, but it won't mean anything to my history teacher. What are some practical uses of Bernoulli numbers and why are they important? Thanks!

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Bernoulli numbers are related to Fermat's Last Theorem, which your history teacher may be familiar with. Ernst Kummer was able to prove Fermat's last theorem for all primes $p$ except for those which divide the numerator of a Bernoulli number. The reason is related to the class numbers of cyclotomic fields.