Brahmagupta
A figure from the books
#Brahmagupta
Brahmagupta · 598–668 CE
In the books · 1 chapter
Who this is
Mathematics and astronomy — the Brāhmapakṣa school of the siddhāntas; author of the Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta (628) and the Khaṇḍakhādyaka (665).
“Every zero on your screen obeys laws first written down by a thirty-year-old in a Rajasthan desert town in 628 CE — laws that travelled to Baghdad within 150 years and to Europe through Baghdad, which is why the world calls Indian numerals "Arabic."”
The big idea, in the book's words:
“Zero and negative numbers are not marks or defects — they are numbers, with rules. He wrote the rules down, called negatives debts and positives fortunes, and got nearly all of it right, thirteen centuries before Europe was comfortable with any of it.”
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