Powerful digit sum (Euler Problem 56)

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A googol ($10^{100}$) is a massive number: one followed by one-hundred zeros; $100^{100}$ is almost unimaginably large: one followed by two-hundred zeros. Despite their size, the sum of the digits in each number is only 1.

Considering natural numbers of the form, $a^b$, where $a, b < 100$, what is the maximum digital sum?

In [3]:
def get_digit_sum(n):
    s = 0
    while n != 0:
        s += (n % 10)
        n //= 10
    return s

assert(get_digit_sum(1337) == 14)
assert(get_digit_sum(100**100) == 1)
In [8]:
s = max([get_digit_sum(a**b) for a in range(1, 100) for b in range(1, 100)])
print(s)
972
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