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    Number Theory in The East

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    Armando Lios
    Number Theory In The East Advertisement The millennium following the decline of Rome saw no significant European advances, but Chinese and Indian scholars were making their own contributions to the theory of numbers.

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    Number Theory in The East

    Uploaded by

    Armando Lios
    13 views2 pages
    Number Theory In The East Advertisement The millennium following the decline of Rome saw no significant European advances, but Chinese and Indian scholars were making their own contributions to the theory of numbers.

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    Number Theory in the East

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    Number Theory In The East Advertisement The millennium following the decline of Rome saw no significant European advances, but Chinese and Indian scholars were making their own contributions to the theory of numbers.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    13 views2 pages

    Number Theory in The East

    Uploaded by

    Armando Lios
    Number Theory In The East Advertisement The millennium following the decline of Rome saw no significant European advances, but Chinese and Indian scholars were making their own contributions to the theory of numbers.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
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    Number Theory In The East

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    The millennium following the decline of Rome saw no significant
    European advances, but Chinese and Indian scholars were
    making their own contributions to the theory of numbers.
    Motivated by questions of astronomy and the calendar,
    the Chinese mathematician Sun Zi (Sun Tzu; flourished c.AD 250)
    tackled multiple Diophantine equations. As one example, he
    asked for a whole number that when divided by 3 leaves a
    remainder of 2, when divided by 5 leaves a remainder of 3, and
    when divided by 7 leaves a remainder of 2 (his answer: 23).
    Almost a thousand years later, Qin Jiushao(1202–61) gave a
    general procedure, now known as the Chinese remainder
    theorem, for solving problems of this sort.
    Meanwhile, Indian mathematicians were hard at work. In the 7th
    century Brahmagupta took up what is now (erroneously) called
    the Pell equation. He posed the challenge to find a perfect
    square that, when multiplied by 92 and increased by 1, yields
    another perfect square. That is, he sought whole
    numbers x and y such that 92x2 + 1 = y2—a Diophantine
    equation with quadratic terms. Brahmagupta suggested that
    anyone who could solve this problem within a year earned the
    right to be called a mathematician. His solution was x = 120
    and y = 1,151.
    In addition, Indian scholars developed the so-called Hindu-
    Arabic numerals—the base-10 notation subsequently adopted by
    the world’s mathematical and civil communities (see numerals
    and numeral systems). Although more number representation
    than number theory, these numerals have prevailed due to their
    simplicity and ease of use. The Indians employed this system—
    including the zero—as early as AD 800.
    At about this time, the Islamic world became a mathematical
    powerhouse. Situated on trade routes between East and West,
    Islamic scholars absorbed the works of other civilizations and
    augmented these with homegrown achievements. For
    example, Thabit ibn Qurrah (active in Baghdad in the 9th
    century) returned to the Greek problem of amicable
    numbers and discovered a second pair: 17,296 and 18,416.

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