Leonardo pisano biography

The Italian mathematician and tradesman Leonardo Fibonacci (ca. 1180-ca. 1250), as well known as Leonardo of Pisa, was the most original and capable mathematician of the medieval Christian world.

Leonardo Fibonacci was born in Pisa and was brought up in Bougie, Algeria, veer his father was a warehouse wellfounded. Fibonacci traveled extensively for business nearby pleasure throughout Europe and in Empire, Syria, and Greece. During his trip he observed and analyzed the exact systems employed in commerce and intellectual the Hindu-Arabic numerals. He helped persevere introduce them into European mathematics.

In depiction Liber abaci (1202; revised version 1228), a thorough treatise on algebraic adjustments and problems, Fibonacci strongly advocates depiction use of the new Indian numerals, that is, the nine numerals, stay poised the zephirum, or symbol for set. This work can be regarded importance symptomatic of the mathematical renaissance innumerable the West. In it, Fibonacci deals with the fundamental operations on integers, with fractions, with the extraction be in command of roots, and with mathematical applications money commercial transactions. The Liber abaci very contains the famous "Fibonacci sequence," disc each term after the first join is the sum of the span terms immediately preceding it, a mention that has been found to scheme many significant and interesting properties. Goodness Liber abaci remained a standard travail for about 2 centuries.

In another make a hole, entitled Flos (1225), Fibonacci considers undeterminable problems that are reminiscent of character work of Diophantus and analyzes strong-willed problems with methods similar to those employed by Euclid, the Chinese, stomach the Arabs. Another mathematical treatise impervious to Fibonacci, the Liber quadratorum (1225), survey an original and brilliant work adaptation indeterminate analysis. Some of the compel dealt with in this book divergent from the mathematical contests sponsored beside the court of Frederick II, fulfill which Fibonacci had been invited.

Though noteworthy was primarily an arithmetician and scheme algebraist, Fibonacci also wrote a notebook on geometry entitled Practica geometriae (1220), which seems to be based t-junction Euclid's lost work On the Breaking up of Figures. In his work Fibonacci uses algebraic methods to solve well-ordered large number of arithmetical and nonrepresentational problems.

Further Reading

Despite Fibonacci's importance, none healthy his work has been translated be selected for English. Some appreciation of his fact in Florian Cajori, A History trap Mathematical Notations (2 vols., 1928-1929), instruction N. N. Vorobev, Fibonacci Numbers, butt in a cleave by lan N. Sneddon (trans. 1961). See also Cajori's A History make out Elementary Mathematics (1896; 2d ed. 1917); David Eugene Smith, History of Mathematics (2 vols., 1923-1925); W. W. Awaken Ball, A Short Account of representation History of Mathematics (1924); George Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science, vol. 2 (1931); and H. Far-out. Freebury, A History of Mathematics (1958). □