BATON ROUGE - An LSU freshman is having her name and work put into mathematics history. 

During a math contest at her high school, there was a bonus question: to come up with a new way to prove the Pythagorean Theorem. 

"There was also a monetary incentive, $500, and that was really great for a senior in high school," joked now-college-freshman Calcea Johnson. 

Johnson and her classmate at the time, Ne'Kiya Jackson, proved the theorem using trigonometry. She said it was a lot of trial and error. 

After having their theorem checked by several professors and experts with a warm reception, Johnson is waiting for their proof to be accepted into the American Mathematical Society journal. 

“If it is accepted into a journal, which we hope it is, then it would mean that our work has been accepted by the math community, which means it's solid and valid. We've had a lot of mathematicians look over our paper beforehand, and they've all said, ‘The math is good. It's valid. This is a good proof,’” Johnson said.

When she’s not being interviewed about her mathematics discovery, Johnson is an LSU Ogden Honors College student studying environmental engineering.