Barkley Rewards School After Pythagorean Theorem Victory

Charles Barkley was as impressed as anybody that two high school seniors in Louisiana became the second and third people in the 2,000-year history of the Pythagorean theorem to solve it using trigonometry. So after seeing their story on CBS' 60 Minutes in May, the basketball great promised to donate $1 million to their school, St. Mary's Academy in New Orleans East. The first installment has arrived, the school said Wednesday—$100,000, with the rest to be paid over a decade, NOLA.com reports. "This transformative gift will assist students as they excel and achieve whatever dream they create within the walls of St. Mary's Academy," the Catholic school's president said.

The challenge came to them in a bonus question on an all-school math contest, which offered a cash prize. The mathematical puzzle—a Greek principle surrounding the relations between three sides of a right triangle—has been proven in other ways many times. But the only other documented proof of the theorem using trigonometry was by mathematician Jason Zimba in 2009. Calcea Johnson and Ne'Kiya Jackson accepted the challenge, spending their free time over last winter break and more trying to solve it. "For two months we worked together nonstop—during school, after school, at home, at lunch," Johnson told the Times-Picayune last year. Her mother said she looked in on her work and found "pages and pages and pages of, like, over 20 or 30 pages for this one problem."

The basketball star-turned-broadcaster "has a love and passion for what the academy stands for and how it is shaping the lives and futures of young girls in New Orleans," a representative of the Charles Barkley Foundation said. Johnson and Jackson have graduated from St. Mary's: Johnson studies environmental engineering at Louisiana State University, and Jackson earned a full scholarship to Xavier University in New Orleans for pharmacy school. A junior at St. Mary's said the school teaches students they can accomplish anything, per CBS News. "That is kinda a standard here," Christina Blazio said. "So we aim very high." (More Charles Barkley stories.)