Al-Khwarizmi's popularizing treatise on alg Abu Rayhan Biruni was a Persian mathematician, physicist, scholar, encyclopedist, philosopher, astronomer, astrologer, traveller, historian, pharmacist, and teacher, who contributed greatly to the fields of mathematics, philosophy, medicine, and scie Omar Khayyam was a Persian mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, and poet. He was born in Nishabur, in northeastern Iran, and spent most of his life near the court of the Karakhanid and Seljuq rulers in the period which witnessed the First Crusade Nicolaus Copernicus was a Renaissance- and Reformation-era mathematician and astronomer who formulated a model of the universe that placed the Sun rather than the Earth at the center of the universe, likely independently of Aristarchus of Samos, who Guillaume Le Gentil was a French astronomer.
He discovered what are now known as the Messier objects M32, M36 and M38, as well as the nebulosity in M8, and he was the first to catalogue the dark nebula sometimes known as Le Gentil 3 in the constella Johann Heinrich Lambert Jean-Henri Lambert in French was a Swiss polymath who made important contributions to the subjects of mathematics, physics particularly optics , philosophy, astronomy and map projections.
Edward Tufte calls him and William Aryabhata, Inventor of the Digit Zero. It is so popular that it has graduated from fact to dogma and then all the way to the butt of jokes.
It is also one of those rare facts that is repeated with complete credulity in both Indian and international literature. Everyone, everywhere, it seems, is in broad agreement that the zero was invented in India. Or was it? The Sceptical Patriot is not one to be fazed by national and international repetition. We must find the true story. And what an intriguing story it proves to be. Next to the fort is the small Chaturbuja temple. Inside the temple is a statue with four arms but no face. It did once have a face, but it has since been vandalised.
There are two inscriptions in this temple. One is engraved over the main door. The temple had fallen into ruin long before the first archaeologists began studying it in the late nineteenth century. The inscription over the main door lay unnoticed even after initial excavations.
It was first noticed, copied down and translated into English in by our old friend and expert Indologist, Eugen Julius Theodor Hultzsch. The second one inside the sanctum sanctorum had been transcribed before, but Hultzsch copied it down again anyway. Hultzsch seems surprised at the quality of the prose in the inscription over the door: The first inscription consists of 27 Sanskrit verses and must have been composed by an ingenious pandit, who was well versed in alamkara.
His extravagant hyperboles will appear startling and amusing even to one accustomed to the usual kavya style. The second inscription from the tablet next to Vishnu is not so great.
But then, history and discovery are eccentric muses. Sometimes they care not for art and aesthetics. The first inscription that impressed Hultzsch has passed into the annals without emitting even a low whimper. Nice, but meh. The second, shoddy inscription, on the other hand, is one of the most important records in the history of mathematics. If there is any record in all of India that is fully deserving of generating and maintaining its own cannon of India facts, this is it.
There should be entire museums complete with multimedia displays and gift shops dedicated to this inscription. So what does this piece of inscription say?
Does it reveal the name of a mysterious king? Give a concrete date for a historical episode that experts had argued over for decades? Does it tell the future, then, in some Nostradamic way?
Bewareth thee the phone that is all touch but no buttons. For children will buyeth expensive apps It is merely an inscription informing one of a donation that has been made to this temple. It goes like this: Om! Adoration to Vishnu! In the year , on the second day of the bright half of Magha Then, a little later, the transcription says: And on this same day, the town gave to these same two temples a perpetual endowment to the effect There is more to this second Gwalior inscription.
But these lines are the relevant bits. So, what is so groundbreaking about these lines? The numbers in them. Especially the two measures in hastas and the number of flower garlands. Inscribed in CE, this inscription is the oldest text anywhere in India in which the zero is used in exactly the way we use it today. The inscription itself refers to year in the Saka calendar. And not just because the zero in hastas or 50 garlands looks like the modern zero -- it does; it looks like a small circle.
But also because it is used in the way it is, both as a placeholder for no value and a number in its own right. There is broad agreement amongst researchers that the inscription at the Chaturbuja Temple in Gwalior is one of the earliest records anywhere of the modern zero. In the essay, he talks of a journey he made to Gwalior to have a look at the inscriptions. He wrote: What is surprising about these numbers is that they are so similar to what modern civilization uses currently. The more you learn about how our current number symbols developed — transmitted from the Hindus to the Persians, then to Mediterranean Islam, and differently in East and West — the more remarkable this appears What the Gwalior tablet shows is that by CE our current place-value system with a base of 10 had become part of popular culture in at least one region of India.
So, are we done with this chapter, then? Also, what is all that confusing talk of placeholders and numbers and usages? Alas, that is the problem with the history of the zero. It is much more complicated than a little circle that stands for nothing. He became prime minister not once or twice but four times.
And he left the British government with a legacy of liberal thinking that continues to influence it in direct and indirect ways to this day. Gladstone was also a Homer fanatic. He read, reread and re- reread works by the great Greek epic poet, first as a student of the classics, and then just for the pure awesome heck of it.
Then, suddenly, during yet another reading of the Greek epics, Gladstone noticed something strange. Not once. Gladstone came to the conclusion that this was because Homer and most other Greeks of his period were colour-blind. Since then, other researchers have disproved this theory and come up with many of their own. Geiger made a stunning discovery: Blue scarcely made an appearance anywhere.
He wrote in his book History and Development of the Human Race : If we consider the nature of the books to which this observation applies, the idea of chance must here be excluded.
Let me first mention the wonderful, youthfully fresh hymns of the Rigveda, the discovery of which amidst the mass of Indian literature seems destined to become as important to the present century in awakening a sense of genuine antiquity as the revival of Greek antiquity at the threshold of modern times was to that period in arousing the sense of beauty and artistic taste.
These hymns, consisting of more than 10, lines, are nearly all filled with descriptions of the sky. Scarcely any other subject is more frequently mentioned; the variety of hues which the sun and dawn daily display in it, day and night, clouds and lightning, the atmosphere and the ether, all these are with inexhaustible abundance exhibited to us again and again in all their magnificence; only the fact that the sky is blue could never have been gathered from these poems by anyone who did not already know it himself.
Produced by a New York public radio station, Radiolab explores one topic each episode through the medium of fascinating stories. But indirectly, I wanted to bring up the complicated notion of identity. Does this mean that they never saw the sky or noticed its colour? Absolutely not. This seems unlikely. Awesome, but unlikely. So did someone have to invent blue for them?
Think about it. I am trying to. Blue was all around them all the time. This means that the value of a number is determined by the position of the digit that is the value of a number is actually the product of the digit by a factor which is determined by the position of the digit. For example lets take three identical digits Here the interesting part is in words the number is written as nine hundred and ninety nine. The hundreds tens and the units here are being determined by the position of the digits that is digit at the first place represents the units, second place represents the tens and the third place represents hundreds.
Similarly any digit at the fourth place shall reprimand thousands. But the symbol for Zero was not used by Aryabhata. Also calculation performed by Aryabhata on square and cubic roots cannot be done if the numbers are not arranged in accordance with the place value system or zero.
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