As mentioned above, the theorem includes numerous earlier transcendence results concerning the exponential function, such as the Hermite–Lindemann theorem and Gelfond–Schneider theorem. It is not quite as encompassing as the still unproven Schanuel's conjecture, and does not imply the six exponentials theorem nor, clearly, the still open four exponentials conjecture.
The main reason Gelfond desired an extension of his result was not just for a slew of new transcendental numbers. In 1935 he used the tools he had developed to prove the Gelfond–Schneider theorem to derive a lower bound for the quantity
|eta_1lambda_1+eta_2lambda_2|
where β1 and β2 are algebraic and λ1 and λ2 are in L.[2] Baker's proof gave lower bounds for quantities like the above but with arbitrarily many terms, and he could use these bounds to develop effective means of tackling Diophantine equations and to solve Gauss' class number problem.