Artist and superhero creator Stan Lee died Monday, Nov. 12, in Los Angeles. The editor of Marvel Comics was the guiding genius behind The Spider-Man, the Hulk, Doctor Strange, the Fantastic Four, Daredevil, Black Panther, the X-Men, and with his brother, co-writer Larry Lieber, the characters Ant-Man, Iron Man and Thor.
Lee worked with comic book legends Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, who co-created The Spider-Man. Lee was 95.
When I was a kid in the 1960s, I read many Spiderman, Hulk, Fantastic Four and other comic books. At the time, superhero comic books were very popular.
When my sons were growing up in the 1990s, I collected Spider-man comic books for them and watched Spiderman movies with them. I also collected superhero toys for them.
Stan Lee imagined and created all of that fictitious world for us and we all owe him so much for filling our lives with his marvelous imagination. To honor his legacy, I constructed this number curiosities as a farewell:
• The sum of the squares of the digits of 11/12/2018, the day Lee died, equals 76. Coincidentally, if numbers 1 to 26 are assigned to the letters of the English alphabet, the sum of the numbers assigned to the letters of Stan Lee equals 76 too.
• If 2018 (the year Lee died) is split in the middle as 20 and 18, the product of the sum and the difference of 20 and 18, namely 38 and 2, also equals 76 (Stan Lee).
• The 38th prime number is 163 and interestingly, 163 equals the sum of the squares of the digits of 12281922, the day Lee was born.
• Moreover, the reverse of 163, namely 361, equals 19 square and interestingly, Stanley Martin Lieber contains 19 letters. Note also that twice 19 results in 38.
• The reverse of 76 (Stan Lee), namely 67, is the 19th prime number.
• Furthermore, half of 19 times the sum of the digits of 19 equals 95, the age Lee died.
• Additionally, 2018 equals twice 1009 and 1009 is the 169th prime number. Interestingly, twice the reverse of 169, namely 961, equals 1922, Lee's birth year. Also, 169 is 13 square and 13 equals the sum of the digits of 76 (Stan Lee).
• The product of the digits of 76 equals 42, the 42nd prime is 181, and twice 181 equals 362. Interestingly, Lee was born on the 362nd day of 1922.
• If Lee was still alive he would have turned 96 on Dec. 28, and 96 equals the sum of the numbers assigned to the letters of Stanley.
• The reverse of 96 is 69 and the 69th prime number is 347. Interestingly, twice 347 plus 1228 (Lee's birth date, December 28) equals 1922 (Lee's birth year).
• Furthermore, the reverse of 347, namely 743, is the 132nd prime number and 132 equals the product of 11 and 12, the month and the day numbers of the day Lee died. Also, 132 divided by the sum of its digits, namely 6, equals 22 (Lee). Note that 22 equals the rightmost two digits of 1922, the year Lee was born.
• Lee was born on 1228 (December 28) and died on 1112 (November 12). Note that the month number of Lee's birthday equals the day number of his death. Further, the day number of his birth, namely 28, equals 4 times 7 and 4 plus 7 equals 11, the month number of his death.
• Lee was born on the 362nd day of 1922 and the reverse of 362, namely 263, is the 56th prime number. Note that twice 56 equals 112, the 112th prime number is 613, the reverse of 613 is 316, and interestingly, Lee died on the 316th day of 2018.
• Moreover, 316 equals four times 79 and 79 is the 22nd prime number (22 representing Lee).
Lastly, Lee's 140th birthday expressed as 12282062 will be numerically special because if split in the middle as 1228 and 2062, half of 2062 is 1031 and the 1031st prime number is 8221, the reverse of 1228.
Aziz Inan is a professor and chairman of the electrical engineering program teaching in the Donald P. Shiley School of Engineering at University of Portland. He can be reached at ainan@up.edu.
