l’intelligence des lignes courbes.But Johann also tried to steal
credit for work on kinetic energy from another Bernoulli, his
son Daniel, by putting a false publication date on his book
Hydraulica,so that it would look like it was completed before
Daniel’s work, Hydrodynamica,on the same topic. Johann’s
arguments against SIR ISAAC NEWTON’s theory of gravitation
are considered to be singularly responsible for delaying the
acceptance of Newton’s work in the scientific world. Despite
his personality flaws, acknowledgement for his mathematical
mind has caused him to be called the Archimedes of his time.Bhaskara (Bhaskara II, Bhaskaracharya)(1114–85) This 12th-
century Indian mathematician was the author of six important
works on math and astronomy, including Lilavati,on
mathematics, and Bijaganitaon algebra. His work included
solving problems with NEGATIVE NUMBERs, rules for addition,
subtraction, and multiplication, in which he showed two
different ways of multiplying (both of which work, and neither
of which are taught today), and rules for squaring and INVERSE
OPERATIONS. He was the first person to use symbols to
represent unknown numbers. He also came up with the first
successful SOLUTIONfor the problem nx^2 + 1 =y^2 , which later
became known as Pell’s EQUATION.
Bombelli, Rafaello(1526–72) This Italian engineer and architect was
an amateur mathematician with no formal university
education, yet he created a book on the subject of algebra,
entitled L’algebra.He was the first to use symbols to denote
EXPONENTs, and he was the creator of the concept of the
IMAGINARY NUMBER, which he indicated as i,as the SOLUTION
for the SQUARE ROOTof –1.
Boole, George(1815–64) As a young man in England, George Boole
became fluent in Latin by the age of 12, in French, German,
and Italian shortly thereafter, became an assistant elementary
school teacher at the age of 16, and opened his own school at
the age of 20. He ultimately wrote more than 50 papers and
became the chair of mathematics at Queen’s College in Cork,
England. He was the first person to work on such algebraic
number properties as the DISTRIBUTIVE PROPERTY, and he
worked on differential EQUATIONs and probabilities. He is best
known for his creation of the algebra of logic, now called
Bhaskara – Boole BIOGRAPHIES
Bhaskara – Boole BIOGRAPHIES
George Boole (Courtesy The
Open Court Publishing Co., AIP
Emilio Segrè Visual Archives)