Waring's Problem
Waring's Problem is a question in number theory that asks whether every positive integer can be expressed as a sum of a fixed number of positive integer powers. Specifically, it seeks to determine the smallest number of terms needed to represent any integer as a sum of k-th powers, where k is a positive integer.
The problem was first proposed by the mathematician Edward Waring in 1770. He conjectured that every positive integer can be expressed as a sum of at most k powers of natural numbers. For example, it has been proven that every integer can be expressed as a sum of at most four squares, which relates to the case where k equals 2.