- Lived:
- 1114 – c. 1185 CE · born at Vijjaḍaviḍa in the western Deccan — most likely near modern Patnadevi, by Chalisgaon in Maharashtra, though the identification is argued; tradition adds a spell at Ujjain, the old capital of Indian astronomy
- Field:
- mathematics and astronomy — the summit of the classical Sanskrit tradition of calculation
- The Big Idea:
- The hardest mathematics of its age can be taught as affection. He solved equations Europe would not crack for another five hundred years, brought infinity and the near-derivative into arithmetic — and wrote it all as verse addressed to a bright girl named Līlāvatī, in problems about bees, pearls and peacocks.
- In their words:
- "…no change takes place in the infinite and immutable God when worlds are created or destroyed, though numerous orders of beings are absorbed or put forth." (on a number divided by zero, Bījagaṇita, in H. T. Colebrooke's 1817 translation)
- If you remember one thing:
- In 1150 a mathematician in the Deccan finished the greatest treatise of medieval Indian science and pitched its arithmetic to a "fawn-eyed" student — and in 1657 Fermat, knowing nothing of him, set Europe's best minds a challenge problem India had solved, to ten digits, five centuries before.