A simple proof that is irrational:

Assume that it’s rational. Then = p/q and p² = 2q². But in the latter equation, the left side must have an even number of prime factors and the right an odd number. That’s a contradiction, so our assumption must be wrong.

In the paper below, Manchester Polytechnic mathematician T.J. Randall credits this “marvellous” proof to Philip J. Davis and Reuben Hersh in their 1982 book The Mathematical Experience, but I can’t find it there.

(T.J. Randall, “67.45 Revisited,” Mathematical Gazette 67:442 [December 1983], 302-303.)

12/20/2023 UPDATE: Reader Hans Havermann finds the proof mentioned in Stuart Hollingdale’s Makers of Mathematics (1989), after the more familiar proof based on parity of p and q. Hollingdale writes that the alternative proof “can be traced back to the Classical period.”