aseantoo submitted to medievalpoc:
BhÄskarÄchÄrya / BhÄskara IIĀ (1114ā1185) was an Indian mathematician and astronomer.
Among his many achievements are the following:
1. He was the first person to explain that when you divide by zero, the result is infinity.
2. He was also the first person to note that a positive number has two square roots - a positive and a negative one.
3. He described the principles ofĀ differential calculus 500 years before Leibniz and Newton. (He definitively came up with Rolleās theorem half a millennium before Rolle himself.)
4. He calculated the length of the rotation of the earth around the sun toĀ 365.2588 days - he was just off by 3 minutes.
Intriguingly, his treatise on arithmetic and geometry, LÄ«lÄvatÄ«, is named after his daughter. He addresses her as an eager student:
Oh LÄ«lÄvatÄ«, intelligent girl, if you understand addition and subtraction, tell me the sum of the amounts 2, 5, 32, 193, 18, 10, and 100, as well as [the remainder of] those when subtracted from 10000.ā and āFawn-eyed child LÄ«lÄvatÄ«, tell me, how much is the number [resulting from] 135 multiplied by 12, if you understand multiplication by separate parts and by separate digits. And tell [me], beautiful one, how much is that product divided by the same multiplier?
These invocations have led some to surmise thatĀ LÄ«lÄvatÄ«, too, was a mathematician.
Image from here:Ā http://mathdept.ucr.edu/pdf/iwm1.pdf
Story of her introduction to math here:Ā http://4go10tales.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/lilavati.html
Wikipedia on Bhaskaracharya
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