Georg Joachim Rheticus

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Rheticus

Georg Joachim Rheticus (1514-1574) Born Died Fields Alma mater 16 February 1514 Feldkirch, Austria 4 December 1574 (aged 60) Kassa, Hungary Mathematician and astronomer University of Wittenberg University of Zurich University of Prague Conrad Gesner Oswald Myconius

Academic advisors

Georg Joachim de Porris, also known as Rheticus (16 February 1514 4 December 1574), was a mathematician, cartographer, navigational-instrument maker, medical practitioner, and teacher. He is perhaps best known for his trigonometric tables and as Nicolaus Copernicus's sole pupil. He facilitated the publication of his master's De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres).

Contents
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1 Surname 2 Patrons 3 Copernicus 4 Later years 5 Trigonometry 6 Works 7 Endnotes 8 References 9 External links

[edit] Surname
Rheticus was born at Feldkirch, Austria. Both his parents, Georg Iserin and Thomasina de Porris, possessed considerable wealth, his father being the town physician. However, Georg abused the trust of many of his patients, stealing belongings and money from their homes. In 1528 he was convicted and executed for his crimes, and as a result his family was stripped of their surname. The family adopted the mothers maiden name de Porris. Later as a student in Wittenberg Georg Joachim adopted the toponym Rheticus, a form of the Latin name for his home region, Rhaetia, a Roman province that had included parts of Austria, Switzerland and Germany. In the matriculation list for the University of Leipzig his family name, de Porris, is translated into German as von Lauchen. The crater Rhaeticus is named for him.

[edit] Patrons
After Georg Iserin's death, Achilles Gasser took over his medical practice, helping Rheticus to continue his studies and supporting him. Rheticus studied at Feldkirch, Zrich and the University of Wittenberg, where he received his M.A. in 1536. During the Reformation the theologian and educator Philipp Melanchthon reorganized the whole educational system of the Lutheran Protestant parts of Germany, reforming and founding several new universities. In 1536 Melanchthon appointed Rheticus as professor of the lower mathematics, arithmetic and geometry, at the Wittenberg University. Two years later, Melanchthon arranged a two-year leave for Rheticus to study with noted astronomers. Leaving Wittenberg in October 1538, he first went to Nuremberg to visit the professor of mathematics at the Eigidien Oberschule Johannes Schner. In Nuremberg he also made the acquaintance of other mathematicians such as Georg Hartmann and Thomas Venatorius as well as the printer-publisher Petreius. During his journey, probably in Nuremberg, Rheticus heard of Copernicus and decided to seek him out. From Petreius Rheticus was given works by Regiomontanus and others, intended as presents for Copernicus. He went on to Peter Apian in Ingolstadt and Joachim Camerarius in Tbingen, then to Gasser in his hometown. From Feldkirch he set out on his journey to visit Copernicus in Frombork.

[edit] Copernicus
In May 1539, Rheticus arrived in Frombork (Frauenburg), where he spent two years with Copernicus. It is unknown whether he had prior access to Copernicus' Commentariolus, an unsigned, unpublished outline of

Copernicus' revolutionary heliocentric theory that Copernicus distributed friends and colleagues three decades before he published De revolutionibus. In September 1539, Rheticus went to Danzig (Gdask) to visit the mayor, who gave him financial assistance to publish his Narratio Prima (First Report)[1] of Copernicus' forthcoming treatise. Rhode in Danzig published Narratio Prima in 1540. While in Danzig, Rheticus interviewed maritime pilots to learn about their problems in navigation. Rheticus also visited Copernicus' friend, Tiedemann Giese, who was Bishop of Culm (now Chemno). In August 1541, Rheticus presented a copy of his Tabula chorographica auff Preussen und etliche umbliegende lender (Map of Prussia and Neighboring Lands) to Albert, Duke of Prussia, who had been trying to compute the exact time of sunrise. Rheticus made an instrument for him that determined the length of the day. Rheticus obtained the duke's permission to publish De revolutionibus. Albrecht asked Rheticus to end his travels and return to his teaching position. Rheticus returned to the University of Wittenberg in October 1541. In 1542, he traveled to Nrnberg to supervise the printing by Johannes Petreius of the first edition of De revolutionibus, which was published shortly before Copernicus' death in 1543.

[edit] Later years

The canon of Warmia Georg Donner and the bishop of Warmia Johannes Dantiscus were both patrons of Rheticus. Rheticus was also commissioned to make a staff for king Sigismund II of Poland, while he held a position as teacher in Krakw for many years. From there he went to Koice in the Kingdom of Hungary, where he died.

[edit] Trigonometry
For much of his life, Rheticus displayed a passion for the study of triangles, the branch of mathematics now called trigonometry. In 1542 he had the trigonometric sections of Copernicus' De revolutiobis published separately under the title De lateribus et angulis triangulorum (On the Sides and Angles of Triangles). In 1551 Rheticus produced a tract titled Canon of the Science of Triangles, the first publication of six-function trigonometric tables (although the word trigonometry was not yet coined). This pamphlet was to be an introduction to Rheticus' greatest work, a full set of tables to be used in angular astronomical measurements.[2] At his death, the Science of Triangles was still unfinished. However, paralleling his own relationship with Copernicus, Rheticus had acquired a student who devoted himself to completing his teacher's work. Valentin Otto oversaw the hand computation of approximately 100,000 ratios to at least ten decimal places. When completed in 1596, the volume, Opus palatinum de triangulus, filled nearly 1,500 pages. Its tables were accurate enough to be used in astronomical computation into the early twentieth century.

Hipparchus
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search This article is about the Greek astronomer. For other meanings, see Hipparchus (disambiguation)

Hipparchus.

Hipparchus/hprks/, or more correctly Hipparchos (Greek: , Hipparkhos; c. 190 BC c. 120 BC), was a Greek astronomer, geographer, and mathematician of the Hellenistic period. He is considered the founder of trigonometry.[1] Hipparchus was born in Nicaea (now Iznik, Turkey), and probably died on the island of Rhodes. He is known to have been a working astronomer at least from 162 to 127 BC.[2] Hipparchus is considered the greatest ancient astronomical observer and, by some, the greatest overall astronomer of antiquity. He was the first whose quantitative and accurate models for the motion of the Sun and Moon survive. For this he certainly made use of the observations and perhaps the mathematical techniques accumulated over centuries by the Chaldeans from Babylonia. He developed trigonometry and constructed trigonometric tables, and he solved several problems of spherical trigonometry. With his solar and lunar theories and his trigonometry, he may have been the first to develop a reliable method to predict solar eclipses. His other reputed achievements include the discovery of Earth's precession, the compilation of the first comprehensive star catalog of the western world, and possibly the invention of the astrolabe, also of the armillary sphere, which he used during the creation of much of the star catalogue. It would be three centuries before Claudius Ptolemaeus' synthesis of astronomy would supersede the work of Hipparchus; it is heavily dependent on it in many areas.

Life and work

Relatively little of Hipparchus' direct work survives into modern times. Although he wrote at least fourteen books, only his commentary on the popular astronomical poem by Aratus was preserved by later copyists. Most of what is known about Hipparchus comes from Ptolemy's (2nd century) Almagest, with additional references to him by Pappus of Alexandria and Theon of Alexandria (c. 4th century AD) in their commentaries on the Almagest; from Strabo's Geographia ("Geography"), and from Pliny the Elder's Naturalis historia ("Natural history") (1st century AD).[3] There is a strong tradition that Hipparchus was born in Nicaea (Greek ), in the ancient district of Bithynia (modern-day Iznik in province Bursa), in what today is the country Turkey. The exact dates of his life are not known, but Ptolemy attributes to him astronomical observations in the period from 147 BC to 127 BC, and some of these are stated as made in Rhodes; earlier observations since 162 BC might also have been made by him. His birth date (c. 190 BC) was calculated by Delambre based on clues in his

work. Hipparchus must have lived some time after 127 BC because he analyzed and published his observations from that year. Hipparchus obtained information from Alexandria as well as Babylon, but it is not known when or if he visited these places. He is believed to have died on the island of Rhodes, where he seems to have spent most of his later life. It is not known what Hipparchus' economic means were nor how he supported his scientific activities. His appearance is likewise unknown: there are no contemporary portraits. In the 2nd and 3rd centuries coins were made in his honour in Bithynia that bear his name and show him with a globe; this supports the tradition that he was born there. Hipparchus is thought to be the first to calculate a heliocentric system, but he abandoned his work because the calculations showed the orbits were not perfectly circular as believed to be mandatory by the science of the time. As an astronomer of antiquity his influence, supported by Aristotle, held sway for nearly 2000 years, until the heliocentric model of Copernicus. Hipparchus' only preserved work is ("Commentary on the Phaenomena of Eudoxus and Aratus"). This is a highly critical commentary in the form of two books on a popular poem by Aratus based on the work by Eudoxus.[4] Hipparchus also made a list of his major works, which apparently mentioned about fourteen books, but which is only known from references by later authors. His famous star catalog was incorporated into the one by Ptolemy, and may be almost perfectly reconstructed by subtraction of two and two thirds degrees from the longitudes of Ptolemy's stars. The first trigonometric table was apparently compiled by Hipparchus, who is now consequently known as "the father of trigonometry".
[edit] Modern speculation

Hipparchus was in the international news in 2005, when it was again proposed (as in 1898) that the data on the celestial globe of Hipparchus or in his star catalog may have been preserved in the only surviving large ancient celestial globe which depicts the constellations with moderate accuracy, the globe carried by the Farnese Atlas. There are a variety of mis-steps [5] in the more ambitious 2005 paper, thus no specialists in the area accept its widely publicized speculation.[6] Lucio Russo has said that Plutarch, in his work On the Face in the Moon, was reporting some physical theories that we consider to be Newtonian and that these may have come originally from Hipparchus;[7] he goes on to say that Newton may have been influenced by them.[8] Both of these claims have been rejected by other scholars.[9] A line in Plutarch's Table Talk states that Hipparchus counted 103049 compound propositions that can be formed from ten simple propositions; 103049 is the tenth SchrderHipparchus number and this line has led to speculation that Hipparchus knew about enumerative combinatorics, a field of mathematics that developed independently in modern mathematics.[10][11]

Babylonian sources
Earlier Greek astronomers and mathematicians were influenced by Babylonian astronomy to some extent, for instance the period relations of the Metonic cycle and Saros cycle may have come from Babylonian sources. Hipparchus seems to have been the first to exploit Babylonian astronomical knowledge and techniques systematically.[12] Except for Timocharis and Aristillus, he was the first Greek known to divide the circle in 360 degrees of 60 arc minutes (Eratosthenes before him used a simpler sexagesimal system dividing a circle into 60 parts). He also used the Babylonian unit pechus ("cubit") of about 2 or 2.5.

Hipparchus probably compiled a list of Babylonian astronomical observations; G. J. Toomer, a historian of astronomy, has suggested that Ptolemy's knowledge of eclipse records and other Babylonian observations in the Almagest came from a list made by Hipparchus. Hipparchus' use of Babylonian sources has always been known in a general way, because of Ptolemy's statements. However, Franz Xaver Kugler demonstrated that the synodic and anomalistic periods that Ptolemy attributes to Hipparchus had already been used in Babylonian ephemerides, specifically the collection of texts nowadays called "System B" (sometimes attributed to Kidinnu).[13] Hipparchus's long draconitic lunar period (5458 months = 5923 lunar nodal periods) also appears a few times in Babylonian records. But the only such tablet explicitly dated is post-Hipparchus so the direction of transmission is not clear.

[edit] Geometry, trigonometry, and other mathematical techniques

Hipparchus was recognized as the first mathematician known to have possessed a trigonometric table, which he needed when computing the eccentricity of the orbits of the Moon and Sun. He tabulated values for the chord function, which gives the length of the chord for each angle. He did this for a circle with a circumference of ,600 and a radius (rounded) of 3438 units: this circle has a unit length of 1 arc minute along its perimeter. He tabulated the chords for angles with increments of 7.5. In modern terms, the chord of an angle equals twice the sine of half of the angle, i.e.:
chord(A) = 2 sin(A/2).

He described the chord table in a work, now lost, called Tn en kukli euthein (Of Lines Inside a Circle) by Theon of Alexandria (4th century) in his commentary on the Almagest I.10; some claim his table may have survived in astronomical treatises in India, for instance the Surya Siddhanta. Trigonometry was a significant innovation, because it allowed Greek astronomers to solve any triangle, and made it possible to make quantitative astronomical models and predictions using their preferred geometric techniques.[14] For his chord table Hipparchus must have used a better approximation for than the one from Archimedes of between 3 + 1/7 and 3 + 10/71; perhaps he had the one later used by Ptolemy: 3;8:30 (sexagesimal) (Almagest VI.7); but it is not known if he computed an improved value himself. Hipparchus could construct his chord table using the Pythagorean theorem and a theorem known to Archimedes. He also might have developed and used the theorem in plane geometry called Ptolemy's theorem, because it was proved by Ptolemy in his Almagest (I.10) (later elaborated on by Carnot). Hipparchus was the first to show that the stereographic projection is conformal, and that it transforms circles on the sphere that do not pass through the center of projection to circles on the plane. This was the basis for the astrolabe. Besides geometry, Hipparchus also used arithmetic techniques developed by the Chaldeans. He was one of the first Greek mathematicians to do this, and in this way expanded the techniques available to astronomers and geographers. There are several indications that Hipparchus knew spherical trigonometry, but the first surviving text of it is that of Menelaus of Alexandria in the 1st century, who on that basis is now commonly credited with its discovery. (Previous to the finding of the proofs of Menelaus a century ago, Ptolemy was credited with the invention of spherical trigonometry.) Ptolemy later used spherical trigonometry to compute things like the rising and setting points of the ecliptic, or to take account of the lunar parallax. Hipparchus may have used a globe for these tasks, reading values off coordinate grids drawn on it, or he may have made approximations from planar

geometry, or perhaps used arithmetical approximations developed by the Chaldeans. He might have used spherical trigonometry. Aubrey Diller has shown that the clima calculations which Strabo preserved from Hipparchus were performed by spherical trigonometry with the sole accurate obliquity known to have been used by ancient astronomers, 2340'. All thirteen clima figures agree with Diller's proposal.[15] Further confirming his contention is the finding that the big errors in Hipparchus's longitude of Regulus and both longitudes of Spica agree to a few minutes in all three instances with a theory that he took the wrong sign for his correction for parallax when using eclipses for determining stars' positions.[16]

[edit] Lunar and solar theory

Geometric construction used by Hipparchus in his determination of the distances to the sun and moon. [edit] Motion of the Moon Further information: Lunar theory and Orbit of the Moon

Hipparchus also studied the motion of the Moon and confirmed the accurate values for two periods of its motion that Chaldean astronomers certainly possessed before him, whatever their ultimate origin. The traditional value (from Babylonian System B) for the mean synodic month is 29 days;31,50,8,20 (sexagesimal) = 29.5305941... days. Expressed as 29 days + 12 hours + 793/1080 hours this value has been used later in the Hebrew calendar (possibly from Babylonian sources). The Chaldeans also knew that 251 synodic months = 269 anomalistic months. Hipparchus used a multiple of this period by a factor of 17, because that interval is also an eclipse period. The Moon also is close to an integer number of years (4267 moons : 4573 anomalistic periods : 4630.53 nodal periods : 4611.98 lunar orbits : 344.996 years : 344.982 solar orbits : 126,007.003 days : 126,351.985 rotations). The 345-year eclipses reoccur with almost identical time of day, elevation, and celestial position. Hipparchus could confirm his computations by comparing eclipses from his own time (presumably 27 January 141 BC and 26 November 139 BC according to [Toomer 1980]), with eclipses from Babylonian records 345 years earlier (Almagest IV.2; [A.Jones, 2001]). Already al-Biruni (Qanun VII.2.II) and Copernicus (de revolutionibus IV.4) noted that the period of 4,267 moons is actually about 5 minutes longer than the value for the eclipse period that Ptolemy attributes to Hipparchus. However, the timing methods of the Babylonians had an error of no less than 8 minutes.[17] Modern scholars agree that Hipparchus rounded the eclipse period to the nearest hour, and used it to confirm the validity of the traditional values, rather than try to derive an improved value from his own observations. From modern ephemerides [18] and taking account of the change in the length of the day (see T) we estimate that the error in the assumed length of the synodic month was less than 0.2 seconds in the 4th century BC and less than 0.1 seconds in Hipparchus' time.
[edit] Orbit of the Moon

It had been known for a long time that the motion of the Moon is not uniform: its speed varies. This is called its anomaly, and it repeats with its own period; the anomalistic month. The Chaldeans took account of this arithmetically, and used a table giving the daily motion of the Moon according to the date within a long period.

The Greeks however preferred to think in geometrical models of the sky. Apollonius of Perga had at the end of the 3rd century BC proposed two models for lunar and planetary motion:
1. In the first, the Moon would move uniformly along a circle, but the Earth would be eccentric, i.e., at some distance of the center of the circle. So the apparent angular speed of the Moon (and its distance) would vary. 2. The Moon itself would move uniformly (with some mean motion in anomaly) on a secondary circular orbit, called an epicycle, that itself would move uniformly (with some mean motion in longitude) over the main circular orbit around the Earth, called deferent; see deferent and epicycle.

Apollonius demonstrated that these two models were in fact mathematically equivalent. However, all this was theory and had not been put to practice. Hipparchus was the first astronomer we know attempted to determine the relative proportions and actual sizes of these orbits. Hipparchus devised a geometrical method to find the parameters from three positions of the Moon, at particular phases of its anomaly. In fact, he did this separately for the eccentric and the epicycle model. Ptolemy describes the details in the Almagest IV.11. Hipparchus used two sets of three lunar eclipse observations, which he carefully selected to satisfy the requirements. The eccentric model he fitted to these eclipses from his Babylonian eclipse list: 22/23 December 383 BC, 18/19 June 382 BC, and 12/13 December 382 BC. The epicycle model he fitted to lunar eclipse observations made in Alexandria at 22 September 201 BC, 19 March 200 BC, and 11 September 200 BC.

For the eccentric model, Hipparchus found for the ratio between the radius of the eccenter and the distance between the center of the eccenter and the center of the ecliptic (i.e., the observer on Earth): 3144 : 327+2/3 ; and for the epicycle model, the ratio between the radius of the deferent and the epicycle: 3122+1/2 : 247+1/2 .

The somewhat weird numbers are due to the cumbersome unit he used in his chord table according to one group of historians, who explain their reconstruction's inability to agree with these four numbers as partly due to some sloppy rounding and calculation errors by Hipparchus, for which Ptolemy criticised him (he himself made rounding errors too). A simpler alternate reconstruction [19] agrees with all four numbers. Anyway, Hipparchus found inconsistent results; he later used the ratio of the epicycle model (3122+1/2 : 247+1/2), which is too small (60 : 4;45 sexagesimal). Ptolemy established a ratio of 60 : 5+1/4.[20] (The maximum angular deviation producible by this geometry is , or about 5 1', a figure that is sometimes therefore quoted as the equivalent of the Moon's equation of the center in the Hipparchan model.)
[edit] Apparent motion of the Sun

Before Hipparchus, Meton, Euctemon, and their pupils at Athens had made a solstice observation (i.e., timed the moment of the summer solstice) on June 27, 432 BC (proleptic Julian calendar). Aristarchus of Samos is said to have done so in 280 BC, and Hipparchus also had an observation by Archimedes. Hipparchus himself observed the summer solstice in 135 BC, but he found observations of the moment of equinox more accurate, and he made many during his lifetime. Ptolemy gives an extensive discussion of Hipparchus' work on the length of the year in the Almagest III.1, and quotes many observations that Hipparchus made or used, spanning 162 BC to 128 BC. Ptolemy quotes an equinox timing by Hipparchus (at 24 March 146 BC at dawn) that differs by 5 hours from the observation made on Alexandria's large public equatorial ring that same day (at 1 hour before noon): Hipparchus may have visited Alexandria but he did not make his equinox observations there; presumably he was on Rhodes (at nearly the same geographical longitude). He could have used the equatorial ring of his armillary sphere or another equatorial ring for these observations, but Hipparchus (and Ptolemy) knew that observations with these instruments are sensitive to a precise alignment with the equator, so if he were restricted to an armillary, it would make more sense to use its meridian ring as a transit instrument. The problem with an

equatorial ring (if an observer is naive enough to trust it very near dawn or dusk) is that atmospheric refraction lifts the Sun significantly above the horizon: so for a northern hemisphere observer its apparent declination is too high, which changes the observed time when the Sun crosses the equator. (Worse, the refraction decreases as the Sun rises and increases as it sets, so it may appear to move in the wrong direction with respect to the equator in the course of the day as Ptolemy mentions. Ptolemy and Hipparchus apparently did not realize that refraction is the cause.) However, such details have doubtful relation to the data of either man, since there is no textual, scientific, or statistical ground for believing that their equinoxes were taken on an equatorial ring, which is useless for solstices in any case. Not one of two centuries of mathematical investigations of their solar errors has claimed to have traced them to the effect of refraction on use of an equatorial ring. Ptolemy claims his solar observations were on a transit instrument set in the meridian. At the end of his career, Hipparchus wrote a book called Peri eniausou megthous ("On the Length of the Year") about his results. The established value for the tropical year, introduced by Callippus in or before 330 BC was 365 + 1/4 days. (Possibly from Babylonian sources, see above [???]. Speculating a Babylonian origin for the Callippic year is hard to defend, since Babylon did not observe solstices thus the only extant System B yearlength was based on Greek solstices. See below. Hipparchus' equinox observations gave varying results, but he himself points out (quoted in Almagest III.1(H195)) that the observation errors by himself and his predecessors may have been as large as 1/4 day. He used old solstice observations, and determined a difference of about one day in about 300 years. So he set the length of the tropical year to 365 + 1/4 - 1/300 days (= 365.24666... days = 365 days 5 hours 55 min, which differs from the actual value (modern estimate) of 365.24219... days = 365 days 5 hours 48 min 45 s by only about 6 min). Between the solstice observation of Meton and his own, there were 297 years spanning 108,478 days. D.Rawlins noted that this implies a tropical year of 365.24579... days = 365 days;14,44,51 (sexagesimal; = 365 days + 14/60 + 44/602 + 51/603) and that this exact yearlength has been found on one of the few Babylonian clay tablets which explicitly specifies the System B month.[21] This is an indication that Hipparchus' work was known to Chaldeans. Another value for the year that is attributed to Hipparchus (by the astrologer Vettius Valens in the 1st century) is 365 + 1/4 + 1/288 days (= 365.25347... days = 365 days 6 hours 5 min), but this may be a corruption of another value attributed to a Babylonian source: 365 + 1/4 + 1/144 days (= 365.25694... days = 365 days 6 hours 10 min). It is not clear if this would be a value for the sidereal year (actual value at his time (modern estimate) about 365.2565 days), but the difference with Hipparchus' value for the tropical year is consistent with his rate of precession (see below).
[edit] Orbit of the Sun

Before Hipparchus, astronomers knew that the lengths of the seasons are not equal. Hipparchus made observations of equinox and solstice, and according to Ptolemy (Almagest III.4) determined that spring (from spring equinox to summer solstice) lasted 94 days, and summer (from summer solstice to autumn equinox) 92 days. This is inconsistent with a premise of the Sun moving around the Earth in a circle at uniform speed. Hipparchus' solution was to place the Earth not at the center of the Sun's motion, but at some distance from the center. This model described the apparent motion of the Sun fairly well. It is known today that the planets, including the Earth, move in approximate ellipses around the Sun, but this was not discovered until Johannes Kepler published his first two laws of planetary motion in 1609. The value for the eccentricity attributed to Hipparchus by Ptolemy is that the offset is 1/24 of the radius of the orbit (which is a little too large), and the direction of the apogee would be at longitude 65.5 from the vernal equinox. Hipparchus may also have used other sets of observations, which would lead to different values. One of his two eclipse trios' solar longitudes are consistent with his having initially adopted inaccurate lengths for spring and summer of 95 and 91 days.[22] His other triplet of solar positions is consistent with 94 and 92 days,[23] an improvement on the results (94 and 92 days) attributed to Hipparchus by Ptolemy, which a few scholars still question the

authorship of. Ptolemy made no change three centuries later, and expressed lengths for the autumn and winter seasons which were already implicit (as shown, e.g., by A. Aaboe).
[edit] Distance, parallax, size of the Moon and Sun Main article: Hipparchus On Sizes and Distances

Diagram used in reconstructing one of Hipparchus' methods of determining the distance to the moon. This represents the earth-moon system during a partial solar eclipse at A (Alexandria) and a total solar eclipse at H (Hellespont).

Hipparchus also undertook to find the distances and sizes of the Sun and the Moon. He published his results in a work of two books called Per megethn ka apostmtn ("On Sizes and Distances") by Pappus in his commentary on the Almagest V.11; Theon of Smyrna (2nd century) mentions the work with the addition "of the Sun and Moon". Hipparchus measured the apparent diameters of the Sun and Moon with his diopter. Like others before and after him, he found that the Moon's size varies as it moves on its (eccentric) orbit, but he found no perceptible variation in the apparent diameter of the Sun. He found that at the mean distance of the Moon, the Sun and Moon had the same apparent diameter; at that distance, the Moon's diameter fits 650 times into the circle, i.e., the mean apparent diameters are 360/650 = 033'14". Like others before and after him, he also noticed that the Moon has a noticeable parallax, i.e., that it appears displaced from its calculated position (compared to the Sun or stars), and the difference is greater when closer to the horizon. He knew that this is because in the then-current models the Moon circles the center of the Earth, but the observer is at the surfacethe Moon, Earth and observer form a triangle with a sharp angle that changes all the time. From the size of this parallax, the distance of the Moon as measured in Earth radii can be determined. For the Sun however, there was no observable parallax (we now know that it is about 8.8", several times smaller than the resolution of the unaided eye). In the first book, Hipparchus assumes that the parallax of the Sun is 0, as if it is at infinite distance. He then analyzed a solar eclipse, which Toomer (against the opinion of over a century of astronomers) presumes to be the eclipse of 14 March 190 BC. It was total in the region of the Hellespont (and in fact in his birth place Nicaea); at the time Toomer proposes the Romans were preparing for war with Antiochus III in the area, and the eclipse is mentioned by Livy in his Ab Urbe Condita VIII.2. It was also observed in Alexandria, where the Sun was reported to be obscured 4/5ths by the Moon. Alexandria and Nicaea are on the same meridian. Alexandria is at about 31 North, and the region of the Hellespont about 40 North. (It has been contended that authors like Strabo and Ptolemy had fairly decent values for these geographical positions, so Hipparchus must have known

them too. However, Strabo's Hipparchus dependent latitudes for this region are at least 1 too high, and Ptolemy appears to copy them, placing Byzantium 2 high in latitude.) Hipparchus could draw a triangle formed by the two places and the Moon, and from simple geometry was able to establish a distance of the Moon, expressed in Earth radii. Because the eclipse occurred in the morning, the Moon was not in the meridian, and it has been proposed that as a consequence the distance found by Hipparchus was a lower limit. In any case, according to Pappus, Hipparchus found that the least distance is 71 (from this eclipse), and the greatest 81 Earth radii. In the second book, Hipparchus starts from the opposite extreme assumption: he assigns a (minimum) distance to the Sun of 490 Earth radii. This would correspond to a parallax of 7', which is apparently the greatest parallax that Hipparchus thought would not be noticed (for comparison: the typical resolution of the human eye is about 2'; Tycho Brahe made naked eye observation with an accuracy down to 1'). In this case, the shadow of the Earth is a cone rather than a cylinder as under the first assumption. Hipparchus observed (at lunar eclipses) that at the mean distance of the Moon, the diameter of the shadow cone is 2+ lunar diameters. That apparent diameter is, as he had observed, 360/650 degrees. With these values and simple geometry, Hipparchus could determine the mean distance; because it was computed for a minimum distance of the Sun, it is the maximum mean distance possible for the Moon. With his value for the eccentricity of the orbit, he could compute the least and greatest distances of the Moon too. According to Pappus, he found a least distance of 62, a mean of 67+1/3, and consequently a greatest distance of 72+2/3 Earth radii. With this method, as the parallax of the Sun decreases (i.e., its distance increases), the minimum limit for the mean distance is 59 Earth radii exactly the mean distance that Ptolemy later derived. Hipparchus thus had the problematic result that his minimum distance (from book 1) was greater than his maximum mean distance (from book 2). He was intellectually honest about this discrepancy, and probably realized that especially the first method is very sensitive to the accuracy of the observations and parameters. (In fact, modern calculations show that the size of the 190 BC solar eclipse at Alexandria must have been closer to 9/10ths and not the reported 4/5ths, a fraction more closely matched by the degree of totality at Alexandria of eclipses occurring in 310 BC and 129 BC which were also nearly total in the Hellespont and are thought by many to be more likely possibilities for the eclipse Hipparchus used for his computations.) Ptolemy later measured the lunar parallax directly (Almagest V.13), and used the second method of Hipparchus with lunar eclipses to compute the distance of the Sun (Almagest V.15). He criticizes Hipparchus for making contradictory assumptions, and obtaining conflicting results (Almagest V.11): but apparently he failed to understand Hipparchus' strategy to establish limits consistent with the observations, rather than a single value for the distance. His results were the best so far: the actual mean distance of the Moon is 60.3 Earth radii, within his limits from Hipparchus' second book. Theon of Smyrna wrote that according to Hipparchus, the Sun is 1,880 times the size of the Earth, and the Earth twenty-seven times the size of the Moon; apparently this refers to volumes, not diameters. From the geometry of book 2 it follows that the Sun is at 2,550 Earth radii, and the mean distance of the Moon is 60 radii. Similarly, Cleomedes quotes Hipparchus for the sizes of the Sun and Earth as 1050:1; this leads to a mean lunar distance of 61 radii. Apparently Hipparchus later refined his computations, and derived accurate single values that he could use for predictions of solar eclipses. See [Toomer 1974] for a more detailed discussion.
[edit] Eclipses

Pliny (Naturalis Historia II.X) tells us that Hipparchus demonstrated that lunar eclipses can occur five months apart, and solar eclipses seven months (instead of the usual six months); and the Sun can be hidden twice in thirty days, but as seen by different nations. Ptolemy discussed this a century later at length in Almagest VI.6. The geometry, and the limits of the positions of Sun and Moon when a solar or lunar eclipse is possible, are explained in Almagest VI.5. Hipparchus apparently made similar calculations. The result that two solar eclipses

can occur one month apart is important, because this can not be based on observations: one is visible on the northern and the other on the southern hemisphere as Pliny indicates and the latter was inaccessible to the Greek. Prediction of a solar eclipse, i.e., exactly when and where it will be visible, requires a solid lunar theory and proper treatment of the lunar parallax. Hipparchus must have been the first to be able to do this. A rigorous treatment requires spherical trigonometry, thus those who remain certain that Hipparchus lacked it must speculate that he may have made do with planar approximations. He may have discussed these things in Per ts kat pltos mniaas ts selns kinses ("On the monthly motion of the Moon in latitude"), a work mentioned in the Suda. Pliny also remarks that "he also discovered for what exact reason, although the shadow causing the eclipse must from sunrise onward be below the earth, it happened once in the past that the moon was eclipsed in the west while both luminaries were visible above the earth" (translation H. Rackham (1938), Loeb Classical Library 330 p. 207). Toomer (1980) argued that this must refer to the large total lunar eclipse of 26 November 139 BC, when over a clean sea horizon as seen from Rhodes, the Moon was eclipsed in the northwest just after the Sun rose in the southeast. This would be the second eclipse of the 345-year interval that Hipparchus used to verify the traditional Babylonian periods: this puts a late date to the development of Hipparchus' lunar theory. We do not know what "exact reason" Hipparchus found for seeing the Moon eclipsed while apparently it was not in exact opposition to the Sun. Parallax lowers the altitude of the luminaries; refraction raises them, and from a high point of view the horizon is lowered.

[edit] Astronomical instruments and astrometry

Hipparchus and his predecessors used various instruments for astronomical calculations and observations, such as the gnomon, the astrolabe, and the armillary sphere. Hipparchus is credited with the invention or improvement of several astronomical instruments, which were used for a long time for naked-eye observations. According to Synesius of Ptolemais (4th century) he made the first astrolabion: this may have been an armillary sphere (which Ptolemy however says he constructed, in Almagest V.1); or the predecessor of the planar instrument called astrolabe (also mentioned by Theon of Alexandria). With an astrolabe Hipparchus was the first to be able to measure the geographical latitude and time by observing stars. Previously this was done at daytime by measuring the shadow cast by a gnomon, or with the portable instrument known as a scaphe.

Equatorial ring of Hipparchus' time.

Ptolemy mentions (Almagest V.14) that he used a similar instrument as Hipparchus, called dioptra, to measure the apparent diameter of the Sun and Moon. Pappus of Alexandria described it (in his commentary on the Almagest of that chapter), as did Proclus (Hypotyposis IV). It was a 4-foot rod with a scale, a sighting hole at one end, and a wedge that could be moved along the rod to exactly obscure the disk of Sun or Moon. Hipparchus also observed solar equinoxes, which may be done with an equatorial ring: its shadow falls on itself when the Sun is on the equator (i.e., in one of the equinoctial points on the ecliptic), but the shadow falls above or below the opposite side of the ring when the Sun is south or north of the equator. Ptolemy quotes (in Almagest III.1 (H195)) a description by Hipparchus of an equatorial ring in Alexandria; a little further he describes two such instruments present in Alexandria in his own time. Hipparchus applied his knowledge of spherical angles to the problem of denoting locations on the Earth's surface. Before him a grid system had been used by Dicaearchus of Messana, but Hipparchus was the first to apply mathematical rigor to the determination of the latitude and longitude of places on the Earth. Hipparchus wrote a critique in three books on the work of the geographer Eratosthenes of Cyrene (3rd century BC), called Prs tn 'Eratosthnous geografan ("Against the Geography of Eratosthenes"). It is known to us from Strabo of Amaseia, who in his turn criticised Hipparchus in his own Geografia. Hipparchus apparently made many detailed corrections to the locations and distances mentioned by Eratosthenes. It seems he did not introduce many improvements in methods, but he did propose a means to determine the geographical longitudes of different cities at lunar eclipses (Strabo Geografia 1.1.12). A lunar eclipse is visible simultaneously on half of the Earth, and the difference in longitude between places can be computed from the difference in local time when the eclipse is observed. His approach would give accurate results if it were correctly carried out but the limitations of timekeeping accuracy in his era made this method impractical.

[edit] Star catalog

Late in his career (possibly about 135 BC) Hipparchus compiled his star catalog, the original of which does not survive. He also constructed a celestial globe depicting the constellations, based on his observations. His interest in the fixed stars may have been inspired by the observation of a supernova (according to Pliny), or by his discovery of precession, according to Ptolemy, who says that Hipparchus could not reconcile his data with earlier observations made by Timocharis and Aristillus. For more information see Discovery of precession. Previously, Eudoxus of Cnidus in the 4th century BC had described the stars and constellations in two books called Phaenomena and Entropon. Aratus wrote a poem called Phaenomena or Arateia based on Eudoxus' work. Hipparchus wrote a commentary on the Arateia his only preserved work which contains many stellar positions and times for rising, culmination, and setting of the constellations, and these are likely to have been based on his own measurements. Hipparchus made his measurements with an armillary sphere, and obtained the positions of at least 850 stars. It is disputed which coordinate system(s) he used. Ptolemy's catalog in the Almagest, which is derived from Hipparchus' catalog, is given in ecliptic coordinates. However Delambre in his Histoire de l'Astronomie Ancienne (1817) concluded that Hipparchus knew and used the equatorial coordinate system, a conclusion challenged by Otto Neugebauer in his A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy (1975). Hipparchus seems to have used a mix of ecliptic coordinates and equatorial coordinates: in his commentary on Eudoxos he provides stars' polar distance (equivalent to the declination in the equatorial system), right ascension (equatorial), longitude (ecliptical), polar longitude (hybrid), but not celestial latitude. As with most of his work, Hipparchus' star catalog was adopted and perhaps expanded by Ptolemy. Delambre, in 1817, cast doubt on Ptolemy's work. It was disputed whether the star catalog in the Almagest is due to Hipparchus, but 19762002 statistical and spatial analyses (by R. R. Newton, Dennis Rawlins, Gerd Grasshoff,[24] Keith Pickering[25] and Dennis Duke[26]) have shown conclusively that the Almagest star catalog is

almost entirely Hipparchan. Ptolemy has even (since Brahe, 1598) been accused by astronomers of fraud for stating (Syntaxis, book 7, chapter 4) that he observed all 1025 stars: for almost every star he used Hipparchus' data and precessed it to his own epoch 2 centuries later by adding 240' to the longitude, using an erroneously small precession constant of 1 per century. In any case the work started by Hipparchus has had a lasting heritage, and was much later updated by Al Sufi (964) and Copernicus (1543). Ulugh Beg reobserved all the Hipparchus stars he could see from Samarkand in 1437 to about the same accuracy as Hipparchus's. The catalog was superseded only in the late 16th century by Brahe and Wilhelm IV of Kassel via superior ruled instruments and spherical trigonometry, which improved accuracy by an order of magnitude even before the invention of the telescope.
[edit] Stellar magnitude

Hipparchus ranked stars in six magnitude classes according to their brightness: he assigned the value of one to the twenty brightest stars, to fainter ones a value of two, and so forth to the stars with a class of six, which can be barely seen with the naked eye. A similar system is still used today.

[edit] Precession of the equinoxes (146130 BC)

See also Precession (astronomy)

Hipparchus is known for being almost universally recognized as discoverer of the precession of the equinoxes. His two books on precession, On the Displacement of the Solsticial and Equinoctial Points and On the Length of the Year, are both mentioned in the Almagest of Claudius Ptolemy. According to Ptolemy, Hipparchus measured the longitude of Spica and Regulus and other bright stars. Comparing his measurements with data from his predecessors, Timocharis and Aristillus, he concluded that Spica had moved 2 relative to the autumnal equinox. He also compared the lengths of the tropical year (the time it takes the Sun to return to an equinox) and the sidereal year (the time it takes the Sun to return to a fixed star), and found a slight discrepancy. Hipparchus concluded that the equinoxes were moving ("precessing") through the zodiac, and that the rate of precession was not less than 1 in a century.

[edit] Named after Hipparchus

The rather cumbersome formal name for the ESA's Hipparcos Space Astrometry Mission was High Precision Parallax Collecting Satellite; it was deliberately named in this way to give an acronym, HiPParCoS, that echoed and commemorated the name of Hipparchus. The lunar crater Hipparchus and the asteroid 4000 Hipparchus are more directly named after him. Abraham de Moivre (26 May 1667 in Vitry-le-Franois, Champagne, France 27 November 1754 in London, England; French pronunciation: [abaam d mwav]) was a French mathematician famous for de Moivre's formula, which links complex numbers and trigonometry, and for his work on the normal distribution and probability theory. He was a friend of Isaac Newton, Edmund Halley, and James Stirling. Among his fellow Huguenot exiles in England, he was a colleague of the editor and translator Pierre des Maizeaux. De Moivre wrote a book on probability theory, The Doctrine of Chances, said to have been prized by gamblers. De Moivre first discovered Binet's formula, the closed-form expression for Fibonacci numbers linking the nth power of to the nth Fibonacci number.

Contents
[hide]

1 Life 1.1 Early years 1.2 Middle years 1.3 Later years 2 Probability 3 De Moivres formula 4 Notes 5 References 6 External links
o o o

[edit] Life
[edit] Early years

Abraham de Moivre was born in Vitry in Champagne on May 26, 1667. His father, Daniel de Moivre, was a surgeon who, though middle class, believed in the value of education. Though Abraham de Moivre's parents were Protestant, he first attended Christian Brothers' Catholic school in Vitry, which was unusually tolerant given religious tensions in France at the time. When he was eleven, his parents sent him to the Protestant Academy at Sedan, where he spent four years studying Greek under Jacques du Rondel. The Protestant Academy of Sedan had been founded in 1579 at the initiative of Franoise de Bourbon, widow of Henri-Robert de la Marck; in 1682 the Protestant Academy at Sedan was suppressed and de Moivre enrolled to study logic at Saumur for two years. Although mathematics was not part of his course work, de Moivre read several mathematical works on his own including Elements de mathematiques by Father Prestet and a short treatise on games of chance, De Ratiociniis in Ludo Aleae, by Christiaan Huygens. In 1684 he moved to Paris to study physics and for the first time had formal mathematics training with private lessons from Jacques Ozanam. Religious persecution in France became severe when King Louis XIV issued the Edict of Fontainebleau in 1685, which revoked the Edict of Nantes, that had given substantial rights to French Protestants. It forbade Protestant worship and required that all children be baptized by Catholic priests. De Moivre was sent to the Prieure de Saint-Martin, a school the authorities sent Protestant children to for indoctrination into Catholicism. It is unclear when de Moivre left the Prieure de Saint-Martin and moved to England, as the records of the Prieure de Saint-Martin indicate that he left the school in 1688, but de Moivre and his brother presented themselves as Huguenots admitted to the Savoy Church in London on August 28, 1687.
[edit] Middle years

By the time he arrived in London, de Moivre was a competent mathematician with a good knowledge of many of the standard texts. To make a living, de Moivre became a private tutor of mathematics, visiting his pupils or teaching in the coffee houses of London. De Moivre continued his studies of mathematics after visiting the Earl of Devonshire and seeing Newtons recent book, Principia. Looking through the book, he realized it was far deeper than books he had studied previously, and was determined to read and understand it. However, as he was required to take extended walks around London to travel between his students, de Moivre had little time for study so he would tear pages from the book and carry them around in his pocket to read between lessons. Eventually de Moivre become so knowledgeable about the material that Newton referred questions to him, saying, Go to Mr. de Moivre; he knows these things better than I do.[1]

By 1692, de Moivre became friends with Edmond Halley and soon after with Isaac Newton himself. In 1695, Halley communicated de Moivres first mathematics paper, which arose from his study of fluxions in the Principia, to the Royal Society. This paper was published in the Philosophical Transactions that same year. Shortly after publishing this paper de Moivre also generalized Newtons famous Binomial Theorem into the Multinomial theorem. The Royal Society became apprised of this method in 1697 and made de Moivre a member two months later. After de Moivre had been accepted, Halley encouraged him to turn his attention to astronomy. In 1705, de Moivre discovered, intuitively, that the centripetal force of any planet is directly related to its distance from the centre of the forces and reciprocally related to the product of the diameter of the evolute and the cube of the perpendicular on the tangent. In other words, if a planet, M, follows an elliptical orbit around a focus F and has a point P where PM is tangent to the curve and FPM is a right angle so that FP is the perpendicular to the tangent, then the centripetal force at point P is proportional to F*M/(R*(F*P)3) where R is the radius of the curvature at M. Johann Bernoulli proved this formula in 1710. Despite these successes, de Moivre was unable to obtain an appointment to a Chair of Mathematics at a university, which would have released him from his dependence on time-consuming tutoring that burdened him more than it did most other mathematicians of the time. At least a part of the reason was a bias against his French origins.[citation needed] In November 1697 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society[2] and in 1712 was appointed to a commission set up by the society, alongside MM. Arbuthnot, Hill, Halley, Jones, Machin, Burnet, Robarts, Bonet, Aston and Taylor to review the claims of Newton and Leibniz as to who discovered calculus. The full details of the controversy can be found in the Leibniz and Newton calculus controversy article. Throughout his life de Moivre remained poor. It is reported that he was a regular customer of Slaughter's Coffee House, St. Martin's Lane at Cranbourn Street, where he earned a little money from playing chess.
[edit] Later years

De Moivre continued studying the fields of probability and mathematics until his death in 1754 and several additional papers were published after his death. As he grew older, he became increasingly lethargic and needed longer sleeping hours. He noted that he was sleeping an extra 15 minutes each night and correctly calculated the date of his death on the day when the additional sleep time accumulated to 24 hours, November 27, 1754.[citation needed] He died in London and was buried at St Martin-in-the-Fields, although his body was later moved.

[edit] Probability
De Moivre pioneered the development of analytic geometry and the theory of probability by expanding upon the work of his predecessors, particularly Christiaan Huygens and several members of the Bernoulli family. He also produced the second textbook on probability theory, The Doctrine of Chances: a method of calculating the probabilities of events in play. (The first book about games of chance, Liber de ludo aleae ("On Casting the Die"), was written by Girolamo Cardano in the 1560s, but not published until 1663.) This book came out in four editions, 1711 in Latin, and 1718, 1738 and 1756 in English. In the later editions of his book, de Moivre gives the first statement of the formula for the normal distribution curve, the first method of finding the probability of the occurrence of an error of a given size when that error is expressed in terms of the variability of the distribution as a unit, and the first identification of the probable error calculation. Additionally, he applied these theories to gambling problems and actuarial tables. An expression commonly found in probability is n! but before the days of calculators calculating n! for a large n was time consuming. In 1733 de Moivre proposed the formula for estimating a factorial as n! = cnn+1/2en. He

obtained an expression for the constant c but it was James Stirling who found that c was (2) .[3] Therefore, Stirling's approximation is as much due to de Moivre as it is to Stirling. De Moivre also published an article called Annuities upon Lives, in which he revealed the normal distribution of the mortality rate over a persons age. From this he produced a simple formula for approximating the revenue produced by annual payments based on a persons age. This is similar to the types of formulas used by insurance companies today. See also de MoivreLaplace theorem

[edit] De Moivres formula

In 1707 de Moivre derived:

which he was able to prove for all positive integral values of n.[citation needed] In 1722 he suggested it in the more well known form of de Moivre's Formula:

In 1749 Euler proved this formula for any real n using Euler's formula, which makes the proof quite straightforward. This formula is important because it relates complex numbers and trigonometry. Additionally, this formula allows the derivation of useful expressions for cos(nx) and sin(nx) in terms of cos(x) and sin(x).

Leonhard Euler
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Leonhard Euler

Portrait by Johann Georg Brucker (1756) 15 April 1707 Basel, Switzerland 18 September 1783 (aged 76) Died
[OS: 7 September 1783]

Born

Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire Kingdom of Prussia, Russian Empire Switzerland Swiss Mathematician and Physicist Imperial Russian Academy of Sciences Berlin Academy University of Basel Johann Bernoulli Nicolas Fuss Johann Hennert Joseph Louis Lagrange

Residence

Nationality Fields

Institutions

Alma mater Doctoral advisor

Doctoral students

Stepan Rumovsky Known for See full list Signature

Notes He is the father of the mathematician Johann Euler He is listed by academic genealogy authorities as the equivalent to the doctoral advisor of Joseph Louis Lagrange.

Leonhard Euler (German pronunciation: [l], ( Swiss German pronunciation (helpinfo)) ( Standard German pronunciation (helpinfo)) English approximation, "Oiler";[1] 15 April 1707 18 September 1783) was a pioneering Swiss mathematician and physicist. He made important discoveries in fields as diverse as infinitesimal calculus and graph theory. He also introduced much of the modern mathematical terminology and notation, particularly for mathematical analysis, such as the notion of a mathematical function.[2] He is also renowned for his work in mechanics, fluid dynamics, optics, and astronomy. Euler spent most of his adult life in St. Petersburg, Russia, and in Berlin, Prussia. He is considered to be the preeminent mathematician of the 18th century, and one of the greatest of all time. He is also one of the most prolific mathematicians ever; his collected works fill 6080 quarto volumes.[3] A statement attributed to PierreSimon Laplace expresses Euler's influence on mathematics: "Read Euler, read Euler, he is the master of us all."[4]

Contents
[hide]

1 Life 1.1 Early years 1.2 St. Petersburg 1.3 Berlin 1.4 Eyesight deterioration 1.5 Return to Russia 2 Contributions to mathematics and physics o 2.1 Mathematical notation o 2.2 Analysis o 2.3 Number theory o 2.4 Graph theory o 2.5 Applied mathematics o 2.6 Physics and astronomy o 2.7 Logic 3 Personal philosophy and religious beliefs 4 Commemorations 5 Selected bibliography 6 See also
o o o o o

7 References and notes 8 Further reading 9 External links

[edit] Life
[edit] Early years

Old Swiss 10 Franc banknote honoring Euler

Euler was born on April 15, 1707, in Basel to Paul Euler, a pastor of the Reformed Church. His mother was Marguerite Brucker, a pastor's daughter. He had two younger sisters named Anna Maria and Maria Magdalena. Soon after the birth of Leonhard, the Eulers moved from Basel to the town of Riehen, where Euler spent most of his childhood. Paul Euler was a friend of the Bernoulli familyJohann Bernoulli, who was then regarded as Europe's foremost mathematician, would eventually be the most important influence on young Leonhard. Euler's early formal education started in Basel, where he was sent to live with his maternal grandmother. At the age of thirteen he enrolled at the University of Basel, and in 1723, received his Master of Philosophy with a dissertation that compared the philosophies of Descartes and Newton. At this time, he was receiving Saturday afternoon lessons from Johann Bernoulli, who quickly discovered his new pupil's incredible talent for mathematics.[5] Euler was at this point studying theology, Greek, and Hebrew at his father's urging, in order to become a pastor, but Bernoulli convinced Paul Euler that Leonhard was destined to become a great mathematician. In 1726, Euler completed a dissertation on the propagation of sound with the title De Sono.[6] At that time, he was pursuing an (ultimately unsuccessful) attempt to obtain a position at the University of Basel. In 1727, he entered the Paris Academy Prize Problem competition, where the problem that year was to find the best way to place the masts on a ship. He won second place, losing only to Pierre Bouguera man now known as "the father of naval architecture". Euler subsequently won this coveted annual prize twelve times in his career.[7]
[edit] St. Petersburg

Around this time Johann Bernoulli's two sons, Daniel and Nicolas, were working at the Imperial Russian Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg. On July 10, 1726, Nicolas died of appendicitis after spending a year in Russia, and when Daniel assumed his brother's position in the mathematics/physics division, he recommended that the post in physiology that he had vacated be filled by his friend Euler. In November 1726 Euler eagerly accepted the offer, but delayed making the trip to St Petersburg while he unsuccessfully applied for a physics professorship at the University of Basel.[8]

1957 stamp of the former Soviet Union commemorating the 250th birthday of Euler. The text says: 250 years from the birth of the great mathematician, academician Leonhard Euler.

Euler arrived in the Russian capital on 17 May 1727. He was promoted from his junior post in the medical department of the academy to a position in the mathematics department. He lodged with Daniel Bernoulli with whom he often worked in close collaboration. Euler mastered Russian and settled into life in St Petersburg. He also took on an additional job as a medic in the Russian Navy.[9] The Academy at St. Petersburg, established by Peter the Great, was intended to improve education in Russia and to close the scientific gap with Western Europe. As a result, it was made especially attractive to foreign scholars like Euler. The academy possessed ample financial resources and a comprehensive library drawn from the private libraries of Peter himself and of the nobility. Very few students were enrolled in the academy in order to lessen the faculty's teaching burden, and the academy emphasized research and offered to its faculty both the time and the freedom to pursue scientific questions.[7] The Academy's benefactress, Catherine I, who had continued the progressive policies of her late husband, died on the day of Euler's arrival. The Russian nobility then gained power upon the ascension of the twelve-year-old Peter II. The nobility were suspicious of the academy's foreign scientists, and thus cut funding and caused other difficulties for Euler and his colleagues. Conditions improved slightly upon the death of Peter II, and Euler swiftly rose through the ranks in the academy and was made professor of physics in 1731. Two years later, Daniel Bernoulli, who was fed up with the censorship and hostility he faced at St. Petersburg, left for Basel. Euler succeeded him as the head of the mathematics department.[10] On 7 January 1734, he married Katharina Gsell (17071773), a daughter of Georg Gsell, a painter from the Academy Gymnasium.[11] The young couple bought a house by the Neva River. Of their thirteen children, only five survived childhood.[12]
[edit] Berlin

Stamp of the former German Democratic Republic honoring Euler on the 200th anniversary of his death. In the middle, it shows his polyhedral formula .

Concerned about the continuing turmoil in Russia, Euler left St. Petersburg on 19 June 1741 to take up a post at the Berlin Academy, which he had been offered by Frederick the Great of Prussia. He lived for twenty-five years in Berlin, where he wrote over 380 articles. In Berlin, he published the two works which he would be most renowned for: the Introductio in analysin infinitorum, a text on functions published in 1748, and the Institutiones calculi differentialis,[13] published in 1755 on differential calculus.[14] In 1755, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In addition, Euler was asked to tutor the Princess of Anhalt-Dessau, Frederick's niece. Euler wrote over 200 letters to her in the early 1760s, which were later compiled into a best-selling volume entitled Letters of Euler on different Subjects in Natural Philosophy Addressed to a German Princess. This work contained Euler's exposition on various subjects pertaining to physics and mathematics, as well as offering valuable insights into Euler's personality and religious beliefs. This book became more widely read than any of his mathematical works, and it was published across Europe and in the United States. The popularity of the 'Letters' testifies to Euler's ability to communicate scientific matters effectively to a lay audience, a rare ability for a dedicated research scientist.[14] Despite Euler's immense contribution to the Academy's prestige, he was eventually forced to leave Berlin. This was partly because of a conflict of personality with Frederick, who came to regard Euler as unsophisticated, especially in comparison to the circle of philosophers the German king brought to the Academy. Voltaire was among those in Frederick's employ, and the Frenchman enjoyed a prominent position in the king's social circle. Euler, a simple religious man and a hard worker, was very conventional in his beliefs and tastes. He was in many ways the direct opposite of Voltaire. Euler had limited training in rhetoric, and tended to debate matters that he knew little about, making him a frequent target of Voltaire's wit.[14] Frederick also expressed disappointment with Euler's practical engineering abilities:
I wanted to have a water jet in my garden: Euler calculated the force of the wheels necessary to raise the water to a reservoir, from where it should fall back through channels, finally spurting out in Sanssouci. My mill was carried out geometrically and could not raise a mouthful of water closer than fifty paces to the reservoir. Vanity of vanities! Vanity of geometry![15]

A 1753 portrait by Emanuel Handmann. This portrayal suggests problems of the right eyelid, and possible strabismus. The left eye, which here appears healthy, was later affected by a cataract.[16] [edit] Eyesight deterioration

Euler's eyesight worsened throughout his mathematical career. Three years after suffering a near-fatal fever in 1735 he became nearly blind in his right eye, but Euler rather blamed his condition on the painstaking work on cartography he performed for the St. Petersburg Academy. Euler's sight in that eye worsened throughout his stay in Germany, so much so that Frederick referred to him as "Cyclops". Euler later suffered a cataract in his good left eye, rendering him almost totally blind a few weeks after its discovery in 1766. Even so, his condition appeared to have little effect on his productivity, as he compensated for it with his mental calculation skills and photographic memory. For example, Euler could repeat the Aeneid of Virgil from beginning to end without hesitation, and for every page in the edition he could indicate which line was the first and which the last. With the aid of his scribes, Euler's productivity on many areas of study actually increased. He produced on average one mathematical paper every week in the year 1775.[3]
[edit] Return to Russia

The situation in Russia had improved greatly since the accession to the throne of Catherine the Great, and in 1766 Euler accepted an invitation to return to the St. Petersburg Academy and spent the rest of his life in Russia. His second stay in the country was marred by tragedy. A fire in St. Petersburg in 1771 cost him his home, and almost his life. In 1773, he lost his wife Katharina after 40 years of marriage. Three years after his wife's death Euler married her half sister, Salome Abigail Gsell (17231794).[17] This marriage lasted until his death. In St Petersburg on 18 September 1783, after a lunch with his family, during a conversation with a fellow academician Anders Johan Lexell about the newly discovered Uranus and its orbit, Euler suffered a brain hemorrhage and died a few hours later.[18] A short obituary for the Russian Academy of Sciences was written by Jacob von Staehlin-Storcksburg and a more detailed eulogy[19] was written and delivered at a memorial meeting by Russian mathematician Nicolas Fuss, one of Euler's disciples. In the eulogy written for the French Academy by the French mathematician and philosopher Marquis de Condorcet, he commented,
...il cessa de calculer et de vivre... he ceased to calculate and to live.[20]

He was buried next to Katharina at the Smolensk Lutheran Cemetery on Vasilievsky Island. In 1785, the Russian Academy of Sciences put a marble bust of Leonhard Euler on a pedestal next to the Director's seat and, in 1837, placed a headstone on Euler's grave. To commemorate the 250th anniversary of Euler's birth, the headstone was moved in 1956, together with his remains, to the 18th-century necropolis at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery.[21]

Euler's grave at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery

[edit] Contributions to mathematics and physics

Part of a series of articles on

The mathematical constant e

Natural logarithm Exponential function Applications in: compound interest Euler's identity & Euler's formula half-lives & exponential growth/decay Defining e: proof that e is irrational representations of e LindemannWeierstrass theorem People John Napier Leonhard Euler Schanuel's conjecture

Euler worked in almost all areas of mathematics: geometry, infinitesimal calculus, trigonometry, algebra, and number theory, as well as continuum physics, lunar theory and other areas of physics. He is a seminal figure in the history of mathematics; if printed, his works, many of which are of fundamental interest, would occupy between 60 and 80 quarto volumes.[3] Euler's name is associated with a large number of topics.
[edit] Mathematical notation

Euler introduced and popularized several notational conventions through his numerous and widely circulated textbooks. Most notably, he introduced the concept of a function[2] and was the first to write f(x) to denote the function f applied to the argument x. He also introduced the modern notation for the trigonometric functions, the letter e for the base of the natural logarithm (now also known as Euler's number), the Greek letter for summations and the letter i to denote the imaginary unit.[22] The use of the Greek letter to denote the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter was also popularized by Euler, although it did not originate with him.[23]
[edit] Analysis

The development of infinitesimal calculus was at the forefront of 18th Century mathematical research, and the Bernoullisfamily friends of Euler were responsible for much of the early progress in the field. Thanks to their influence, studying calculus became the major focus of Euler's work. While some of Euler's proofs are not acceptable by modern standards of mathematical rigour[24] (in particular his reliance on the principle of the generality of algebra), his ideas led to many great advances. Euler is well known in analysis for his frequent use and development of power series, the expression of functions as sums of infinitely many terms, such as

Notably, Euler directly proved the power series expansions for e and the inverse tangent function. (Indirect proof via the inverse power series technique was given by Newton and Leibniz between 1670 and 1680.) His

daring use of power series enabled him to solve the famous Basel problem in 1735 (he provided a more elaborate argument in 1741):[24]

A geometric interpretation of Euler's formula

Euler introduced the use of the exponential function and logarithms in analytic proofs. He discovered ways to express various logarithmic functions using power series, and he successfully defined logarithms for negative and complex numbers, thus greatly expanding the scope of mathematical applications of logarithms.[22] He also defined the exponential function for complex numbers, and discovered its relation to the trigonometric functions. For any real number , Euler's formula states that the complex exponential function satisfies

A special case of the above formula is known as Euler's identity,

called "the most remarkable formula in mathematics" by Richard P. Feynman, for its single uses of the notions of addition, multiplication, exponentiation, and equality, and the single uses of the important constants 0, 1, e, i and .[25] In 1988, readers of the Mathematical Intelligencer voted it "the Most Beautiful Mathematical Formula Ever".[26] In total, Euler was responsible for three of the top five formulae in that poll.[26] De Moivre's formula is a direct consequence of Euler's formula. In addition, Euler elaborated the theory of higher transcendental functions by introducing the gamma function and introduced a new method for solving quartic equations. He also found a way to calculate integrals with complex limits, foreshadowing the development of modern complex analysis. He also invented the calculus of variations including its best-known result, the EulerLagrange equation. Euler also pioneered the use of analytic methods to solve number theory problems. In doing so, he united two disparate branches of mathematics and introduced a new field of study, analytic number theory. In breaking ground for this new field, Euler created the theory of hypergeometric series, q-series, hyperbolic trigonometric functions and the analytic theory of continued fractions. For example, he proved the infinitude of primes using

the divergence of the harmonic series, and he used analytic methods to gain some understanding of the way prime numbers are distributed. Euler's work in this area led to the development of the prime number theorem.[27]
[edit] Number theory

Euler's interest in number theory can be traced to the influence of Christian Goldbach, his friend in the St. Petersburg Academy. A lot of Euler's early work on number theory was based on the works of Pierre de Fermat. Euler developed some of Fermat's ideas, and disproved some of his conjectures. Euler linked the nature of prime distribution with ideas in analysis. He proved that the sum of the reciprocals of the primes diverges. In doing so, he discovered the connection between the Riemann zeta function and the prime numbers; this is known as the Euler product formula for the Riemann zeta function. Euler proved Newton's identities, Fermat's little theorem, Fermat's theorem on sums of two squares, and he made distinct contributions to Lagrange's four-square theorem. He also invented the totient function (n) which is the number of positive integers less than or equal to the integer n that are coprime to n. Using properties of this function, he generalized Fermat's little theorem to what is now known as Euler's theorem. He contributed significantly to the theory of perfect numbers, which had fascinated mathematicians since Euclid. Euler also conjectured the law of quadratic reciprocity. The concept is regarded as a fundamental theorem of number theory, and his ideas paved the way for the work of Carl Friedrich Gauss.[28] By 1772 Euler had proved that 231 1 = 2,147,483,647 is a Mersenne prime. It may have remained the largest known prime until 1867.[29]
[edit] Graph theory

Map of Knigsberg in Euler's time showing the actual layout of the seven bridges, highlighting the river Pregel and the bridges.

In 1736, Euler solved the problem known as the Seven Bridges of Knigsberg.[30] The city of Knigsberg, Prussia was set on the Pregel River, and included two large islands which were connected to each other and the mainland by seven bridges. The problem is to decide whether it is possible to follow a path that crosses each bridge exactly once and returns to the starting point. It is not possible: there is no Eulerian circuit. This solution is considered to be the first theorem of graph theory, specifically of planar graph theory.[30] Euler also discovered the formula V E + F = 2 relating the number of vertices, edges, and faces of a convex polyhedron,[31] and hence of a planar graph. The constant in this formula is now known as the Euler

characteristic for the graph (or other mathematical object), and is related to the genus of the object.[32] The study and generalization of this formula, specifically by Cauchy[33] and L'Huillier,[34] is at the origin of topology.
[edit] Applied mathematics

Some of Euler's greatest successes were in solving real-world problems analytically, and in describing numerous applications of the Bernoulli numbers, Fourier series, Venn diagrams, Euler numbers, the constants e and , continued fractions and integrals. He integrated Leibniz's differential calculus with Newton's Method of Fluxions, and developed tools that made it easier to apply calculus to physical problems. He made great strides in improving the numerical approximation of integrals, inventing what are now known as the Euler approximations. The most notable of these approximations are Euler's method and the EulerMaclaurin formula. He also facilitated the use of differential equations, in particular introducing the EulerMascheroni constant:

One of Euler's more unusual interests was the application of mathematical ideas in music. In 1739 he wrote the Tentamen novae theoriae musicae, hoping to eventually incorporate musical theory as part of mathematics. This part of his work, however, did not receive wide attention and was once described as too mathematical for musicians and too musical for mathematicians.[35]
Physics and astronomy

Euler helped develop the EulerBernoulli beam equation, which became a cornerstone of engineering. Aside from successfully applying his analytic tools to problems in classical mechanics, Euler also applied these techniques to celestial problems. His work in astronomy was recognized by a number of Paris Academy Prizes over the course of his career. His accomplishments include determining with great accuracy the orbits of comets and other celestial bodies, understanding the nature of comets, and calculating the parallax of the sun. His calculations also contributed to the development of accurate longitude tables.[36] In addition, Euler made important contributions in optics. He disagreed with Newton's corpuscular theory of light in the Opticks, which was then the prevailing theory. His 1740s papers on optics helped ensure that the wave theory of light proposed by Christian Huygens would become the dominant mode of thought, at least until the development of the quantum theory of light.[37] In 1757 he published an important set of equations for inviscid flow, that are now known as the Euler equations.
[edit] Logic

He is also credited with using closed curves to illustrate syllogistic reasoning (1768). These diagrams have become known as Euler diagrams.[38]

Personal philosophy and religious beliefs

Euler and his friend Daniel Bernoulli were opponents of Leibniz's monadism and the philosophy of Christian Wolff. Euler insisted that knowledge is founded in part on the basis of precise quantitative laws, something that monadism and Wolffian science were unable to provide. Euler's religious leanings might also have had a bearing on his dislike of the doctrine; he went so far as to label Wolff's ideas as "heathen and atheistic".[39]

Much of what is known of Euler's religious beliefs can be deduced from his Letters to a German Princess and an earlier work, Rettung der Gttlichen Offenbahrung Gegen die Einwrfe der Freygeister (Defense of the Divine Revelation against the Objections of the Freethinkers). These works show that Euler was a devout Christian who believed the Bible to be inspired; the Rettung was primarily an argument for the divine inspiration of scripture.[40] There is a famous legend,[41] inspired by Euler's arguments with secular philosophers over religion, which is set during Euler's second stint at the St. Petersburg academy. The French philosopher Denis Diderot was visiting Russia on Catherine the Great's invitation. However, the Empress was alarmed that the philosopher's atheism was influencing members of her court, and so Euler was asked to confront the Frenchman. Diderot was later informed that a learned mathematician had produced a proof of the existence of God: he agreed to view the proof as it was presented in court. Diderot, to whom (says the legend[42]) all mathematics was supposed to be gibberish, would stand dumbstruck as peals of laughter would have erupted from the court.

William Oughtred From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

William Oughtred (1575-1660). 5 March 1575 Eton, Buckinghamshire, England 30 June 1660 (aged 85) Albury, Surrey, England England English Mathematician Eton College King's College, Cambridge

Born

Died

Residence Nationality Fields Alma mater

Doctoral students

John Wallis Christopher Wren Richard Delamain Seth Ward Slide rule Multiplication "" sign

Known for

William Oughtred (5 March 1575 30 June 1660) was an English mathematician. After John Napier invented logarithms, and Edmund Gunter created the logarithmic scales (lines, or rules) upon which slide rules are based, it was Oughtred who first used two such scales sliding by one another to perform direct multiplication and division; and he is credited as the inventor of the slide rule in 1622. Oughtred also introduced the "" symbol for multiplication as well as the abbreviations "sin" and "cos" for the sine and cosine functions.[1]

Life
Oughtred was born at Eton in Buckinghamshire (now part of Berkshire), and educated there and at King's College, Cambridge, of which he became fellow.[2] Being admitted to holy orders, he left the University of Cambridge about 1603, for a living at Shalford; he was presented in 1610 to the rectory of Albury, near Guildford in Surrey, where he settled. He married Christsgift Caryll, (niece) of the Caryll family of Tangley Hall at Wonersh,[3] of which Lady Elizabeth Aungier (daughter of Sir Francis), wife of Simon Caryll 16071619, was matriarch and then dowager until her death c.1650.[4] About 1628 he was appointed by the Earl of Arundel to instruct his son in mathematics. He corresponded with some of the most eminent scholars of his time, including William Alabaster, Sir Charles Cavendish, and William Gascoigne.[5][6] He kept up regular contacts with Gresham College, where he knew Henry Briggs and Gunter.[7] He offered free mathematical tuition to pupils, who included Richard Delamain, and Jonas Moore, making him an influential teacher of a generation of mathematicians. Seth Ward resided with Oughtred for six months to learn contemporary mathematics, and the physician Charles Scarburgh also stayed at Albury; John Wallis, and Christopher Wren corresponded with him.[8] Another Albury pupil was Robert Wood, who helped him get the Clavis through the press.[9] The invention of the slide rule involved Oughtred in a priority dispute with Delamain. They also disagreed on pedagogy in mathematics, with Oughtred arguing that theory should precede practice.[10][11] He remained rector until his death in 1660 at Albury, a month after the restoration of Charles II.[12]

Interest in the occult

Oughtred had an interest in alchemy and astrology. The testimony for his occult activities is quite slender, but there has been an accretion to his reputation based on his contemporaries. According to John Aubrey, he was not entirely sceptical about astrology. William Lilly, an eminent astrologer, claimed in his autobiography to have intervened on behalf of Oughtred to prevent his ejection by Parliament in

1646. In fact Oughtred was protected at this time by Bulstrode Whitelocke.[16] Aubrey states that (despite their political differences) he was also defended by Sir Richard Onslow.[17] Elias Ashmole was (according to Aubrey) a neighbour in Surrey, though Ashmole's estates acquired by marriage were over the county line in Berkshire; and Oughtred's name has been mentioned in purported histories of early freemasonry, a suggestion that Oughtred was present at Ashmole's 1646 initiation going back to Thomas De Quincey.[18][19] It was used by George Wharton in publishing The Cabal of the Twelve Houses astrological by Morinus (Jean-Baptiste Morin) in 1659. He expressed millenarian views to John Evelyn, as recorded in Evelyn's Diary, entry for 28 August 1655.

Works
Books

He published, among other mathematical works, Clavis Mathematicae (The Key to Mathematics), in 1631. It became a classic, reprinted in several editions, and used by Wallis and Isaac Newton amongst others. It was not ambitious in scope, but an epitome aiming to represent current knowledge of algebra concisely. It argued for a less verbose style of mathematics, with a greater dependence on symbols; drawing on Franois Vite (though not explicitly), Oughtred also innovated freely in symbols, introducing not only the multiplication sign as now used universally, but also the proportion sign (double colon ::).[20] The book became popular around 15 years later, as mathematics took a greater role in higher education. Wallis wrote the introduction to his 1652 edition, and used it to publicise his skill as cryptographer;[21] in another, Oughtred promoted the talents of Wren. Other works were a treatise on navigation entitled Circles of Proportion, in 1632, and a book on trigonometry and dialling, and his Opuscula Mathematica, published posthumously in 1676. He invented a universal equinoctial ring dial of two rings.[22]

Clavis Mathematicae (1631) further Latin editions 1648, 1652, 1667, 1693; first English edition 1647. Circles of Proportion and the Horizontal Instrument (1632); this was edited by his pupil, William Forster.[23] Trigonometria with Canones sinuum (1657).

Slide rules

Oughtred's invention of the slide rule consisted of taking a single "rule", already known to Gunter, and simplifying the method used to employ it. Gunter required the use of a pair of dividers, to lay off distances on his rule; Oughtred made the step of sliding two rules past each other to achieve the same ends.[24] His original design of some time in the 1620s was for a circular slide rule; but he was not the first into print with this idea, which was published by Delamain in 1630. The conventional design of a sliding middle section for a linear rule was an invention of the 1650s.[25]
Sun dials

He invented the double horizontal sundial, now named Oughtred-type after him.[26] A short description The description and use of the double Horizontall Dyall (16 pages) was added to a 1653 edition (in English translation) of the pioneer book on recreational mathematics, Rcrations Mathmatiques (1624) by Hendrik van Etten and Jean Leurechon. That translation itself is no longer attributed to Oughtred, but (probably) to Francis Malthus.[27]

Ptolemy
Ptolemy

An early Baroque artist's rendition of Claudius Ptolemaeus Born Died Occupation c. AD 90 Egypt c. AD 168 (aged 7778) Alexandria, Egypt mathematician, geographer, astronomer, astrologer

Claudius Ptolemy ( /tlmi/; Greek: , Klaudios Ptolemaios; Latin: Claudius Ptolemaeus; c. AD 90 c. AD 168), was a Greek-Roman citizen of Egypt who wrote in Greek.[1] He was a mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer, and poet of a single epigram in the Greek Anthology.[2][3] He lived in Egypt under Roman rule, and is believed to have been born in the town of Ptolemais Hermiou in the Thebaid. This theory, proposed by Theodore Meliteniotes, could be correct, but it is late (ca. 1360) and unsupported.[4] There is no reason to suppose that he ever lived anywhere else than Alexandria,[4] where he died around AD 168.[5] Ptolemy was the author of several scientific treatises, at least three of which were of continuing importance to later Islamic and European science. The first is the astronomical treatise now known as the Almagest (in Greek, , "The Great Treatise", originally , "Mathematical Treatise"). The second is the Geography, which is a thorough discussion of the geographic knowledge of the Greco-Roman world. The third is the astrological treatise known sometimes in Greek as the Apotelesmatika (), more commonly in Greek as the Tetrabiblos ( "Four books"), and in Latin as the Quadripartitum (or four books) in which he attempted to adapt horoscopic astrology to the Aristotelian natural philosophy of his day.

Background
Engraving of a crowned Ptolemy being guided by the muse Astronomy, from Margarita Philosophica by Gregor Reisch, 1508. Although Abu Ma'shar believed Ptolemy to be one of the Ptolemies who ruled Egypt after the conquest of Alexander the title King Ptolemy is generally viewed as a mark of respect for Ptolemy's elevated standing in science. The name Claudius is a Roman nomen; the fact that Ptolemy bore it indicates he lived under the Roman rule of Egypt with the privileges and political rights of Roman citizenship. It would have suited custom if the first of Ptolemy's family to become a citizen (whether he or an ancestor) took the nomen from a Roman called Claudius who was responsible for granting citizenship. If, as was common, this was the emperor, citizenship would have been granted between AD 41 and 68 (when Claudius, and then Nero, were emperors). The astronomer would also have had a praenomen, which remains unknown. It may have been Tiberius, as that praenomen was very common among those whose families had been granted citizenship by these emperors.[citation needed] Ptolemaeus ( Ptolemaios) is a Greek name. It occurs once in Greek mythology, and is of Homeric form.[6] It was common among the Macedonian upper class at the time of Alexander the Great, and there were several of this name among Alexander's army, one of whom made himself King of Egypt in 323 BC: Ptolemy I Soter. All the kings after him, until Egypt became a Roman province in 30 BC, were also Ptolemies. Perhaps for no other reason than the association of name, the 9th century Persian astronomer Abu Ma'shar assumed Ptolemy to be member of Egypt's royal lineage, stating that the ten kings of Egypt who followed Alexander were wise "and included Ptolemy the Wise, who composed the book of the Almagest". Abu Ma'shar recorded a belief that a different member of this royal line "composed the book on astrology and attributed it to Ptolemy". We can evidence historical confusion on this point from Abu Ma'shar's subsequent remark It is sometimes said that the very learned man who wrote the book of astrology also wrote the book of the Almagest. The correct answer is not known.[7] There is little evidence on the subject of Ptolemy's ancestry, apart from what can be drawn from the details of his name (see above); however modern scholars refer to Abu Mashars account as erroneous,[8] and it is no longer doubted that the astronomer who wrote the Almagest also wrote the Tetrabiblos as its astrological conterpart.[9] Beyond his being considered a member of Alexandria's Greek society, few details of Ptolemy's life are known for certain. He wrote in Ancient Greek and is known to have utilized Babylonian astronomical data.[10][11] He was a Roman citizen, but most scholars conclude that Ptolemy was ethnically Greek,[12][13][14] although some suggest he was a Hellenized Egyptian.[13][15][16] He was often known in later Arabic sources as "the Upper Egyptian",[17] suggesting he may have had origins in southern Egypt.[18] Later Arabic astronomers, geographers and physicists referred to him by his name in Arabic: Batlaymus.

Astronomy
Further information: Almagest The Almagest is the only surviving comprehensive ancient treatise on astronomy. Babylonian astronomers had developed arithmetical techniques for calculating astronomical phenomena; Greek astronomers such as Hipparchus had produced geometric models for calculating celestial motions. Ptolemy, however, claimed to have derived his geometrical models from selected astronomical observations by his predecessors spanning more than 800 years, though astronomers have for centuries suspected that his models' parameters were adopted independently of observations.[20] Ptolemy presented his astronomical models in convenient tables, which could be used to compute the future or past position of the planets.[21] The Almagest also contains a star catalogue, which is an appropriated version of a catalogue created by Hipparchus. Its list of forty-eight constellations is ancestral to the modern system of constellations, but unlike the modern system they did not cover the whole sky

(only the sky Hipparchus could see). Through the Middle Ages it was spoken of as the authoritative text on astronomy, with its author becoming an almost mythical figure, called Ptolemy, King of Alexandria.[22] The Almagest was preserved, like most of Classical Greek science, in Arabic manuscripts (hence its familiar name). Because of its reputation, it was widely sought and was translated twice into Latin in the 12th century, once in Sicily and again in Spain.[23] Ptolemy's model, like those of his predecessors, was geocentric and was almost universally accepted until the appearance of simpler heliocentric models during the scientific revolution. His Planetary Hypotheses went beyond the mathematical model of the Almagest to present a physical realization of the universe as a set of nested spheres,[24] in which he used the epicycles of his planetary model to compute the dimensions of the universe. He estimated the Sun was at an average distance of 1210 Earth radii while the radius of the sphere of the fixed stars was 20,000 times the radius of the Earth.[25] Ptolemy presented a useful tool for astronomical calculations in his Handy Tables, which tabulated all the data needed to compute the positions of the Sun, Moon and planets, the rising and setting of the stars, and eclipses of the Sun and Moon. Ptolemy's Handy Tables provided the model for later astronomical tables or zjes. In the Phaseis (Risings of the Fixed Stars) Ptolemy gave a parapegma, a star calendar or almanac based on the hands and disappearances of stars over the course of the solar year.

Geography
Ptolemy's other main work is his Geographia. This also is a compilation of what was known about the world's geography in the Roman Empire during his time. He relied somewhat on the work of an earlier geographer, Marinos of Tyre, and on gazetteers of the Roman and ancient Persian Empire, but most of his sources beyond the perimeter of the Empire were unreliable.[citation needed] The first part of the Geographia is a discussion of the data and of the methods he used. As with the model of the solar system in the Almagest, Ptolemy put all this information into a grand scheme. Following Marinos, he assigned coordinates to all the places and geographic features he knew, in a grid that spanned the globe. Latitude was measured from the equator, as it is today, but Ptolemy preferred in book 8 to express it as the length of the longest day rather than degrees of arc (the length of the midsummer day increases from 12h to 24h as one goes from the equator to the polar circle). In books 2 through 7, he used degrees and put the meridian of 0 longitude at the most western land he knew, the "Blessed Islands", probably the Cape Verde islands (not the Canary Islands, as long accepted) as suggested by the location of the six dots labelled the "FORTUNATA" islands near the left extreme of the blue sea of Ptolemy's map here reproduced.

A 15th-century manuscript copy of the Ptolemy world map, reconstituted from Ptolemy's Geographia (circa 150), indicating the countries of "Serica" and "Sinae" (China) at the extreme east, beyond the island of "Taprobane" (Sri Lanka, oversized) and the "Aurea Chersonesus" (Malay Peninsula).

Ptolemy also devised and provided instructions on how to create maps both of the whole inhabited world (oikoumen) and of the Roman provinces. In the second part of the Geographia he provided the necessary topographic lists, and captions for the maps. His oikoumen spanned 180 degrees of longitude from the Blessed Islands in the Atlantic Ocean to the middle of China, and about 80 degrees of latitude from Shetland to antiMeroe (east coast of Africa); Ptolemy was well aware that he knew about only a quarter of the globe, and an erroneous extension of China southward suggests his sources did not reach all the way to the Pacific Ocean. The maps in surviving manuscripts of Ptolemy's Geographia, however, date only from about 1300, after the text was rediscovered by Maximus Planudes. It seems likely that the topographical tables in books 27 are cumulative texts texts which were altered and added to as new knowledge became available in the centuries after Ptolemy (Bagrow 1945). This means that information contained in different parts of the Geography is likely to be of different date.

A printed map from the 15th century depicting Ptolemy's description of the Ecumene, (1482, Johannes Schnitzer, engraver). Maps based on scientific principles had been made since the time of Eratosthenes (3rd century BC), but Ptolemy improved projections. It is known that a world map based on the Geographia was on display in Augustodunum, Gaul in late Roman times. In the 15th century Ptolemy's Geographia began to be printed with engraved maps; the earliest printed edition with engraved maps was produced in Bologna in 1477, followed quickly by a Roman edition in 1478 (Campbell, 1987). An edition printed at Ulm in 1482, including woodcut maps, was the first one printed north of the Alps. The maps look distorted as compared to modern maps, because Ptolemy's data was inaccurate. One reason is that Ptolemy estimated the size of the Earth as too small: while Eratosthenes found 700 stadia for a great circle degree on the globe, in the Geographia Ptolemy uses 500 stadia. It is highly probable that these were the same stadion since Ptolemy switched from the former scale to the latter between the Syntaxis and the Geographia, and severely readjusted longitude degrees accordingly. If they both used the Attic stadion of about 185 meters, then the older estimate is 1/6 too large, and Ptolemy's value is 1/6 too small, a difference explained as due to ancient scientists' use of simple methods of measuring the earth, which were corrupted either high or low by a factor of 5/6, due to air's bending of horizontal light rays by 1/6 of the Earth's curvature.[citation needed] See also Ancient Greek units of measurement and History of geodesy. Because Ptolemy derived many of his key latitudes from crude longest day values, his latitudes are erroneous on average by roughly a degree (2 degrees for Byzantium, 4 degrees for Carthage), though capable ancient astronomers knew their latitudes to more like a minute. (Ptolemy's own latitude was in error by 14'.) He agreed (Geographia 1.4) that longitude was best determined by simultaneous observation of lunar eclipses, yet he was so out of touch with the scientists of his day that he knew of no such data more recent than 500 years before (Arbela eclipse). When switching from 700 stadia per degree to 500, he (or Marinos) expanded longitude differences between cities accordingly (a point first realized by P.Gosselin in 1790), resulting in serious over-

stretching of the Earth's east-west scale in degrees, though not distance. Achieving highly precise longitude remained a problem in geography until the invention of the marine chronometer at the end of the 18th century. It must be added that his original topographic list cannot be reconstructed: the long tables with numbers were transmitted to posterity through copies containing many scribal errors, and people have always been adding or improving the topographic data: this is a testimony to the persistent popularity of this influential work in the history of cartography.

Astrology
The mathematician Claudius Ptolemy 'the Alexandrian' as imagined by a 16th century artist Ptolemy has been referred to as a pro-astrological authority of the highest magnitude.[26] His astrological treatise, a work in four parts, is known by the Greek term Tetrabiblos, or the Latin equivalent Quadripartitum: Four Books. Ptolemy's own title is unknown, but may have been the term found in some Greek manuscripts: Apotelesmatika, roughly meaning 'Astrological Outcomes,' 'Effects' or Prognostics.[27][28] As a source of reference the Tetrabiblos is said to have "enjoyed almost the authority of a Bible among the astrological writers of a thousand years or more".[29] It was first translated from Arabic into Latin by Plato of Tivoli (Tiburtinus) in 1138, while he was in Spain.[30] The Tetrabiblos is an extensive and continually reprinted treatise on the ancient principles of horoscopic astrology. That it did not quite attain the unrivaled status of the Almagest was perhaps because it did not cover some popular areas of the subject, particularly electional astrology (interpreting astrological charts for a particular moment to determine the outcome of a course of action to be initiated at that time), and medical astrology, which were later adoptions. The great popularity that the Tetrabiblos did possess might be attributed to its nature as an exposition of the art of astrology and as a compendium of astrological lore, rather than as a manual. It speaks in general terms, avoiding illustrations and details of practice. Ptolemy was concerned to defend astrology by defining its limits, compiling astronomical data that he believed was reliable and dismissing practices (such as considering the numerological significance of names) that he believed to be without sound basis. Much of the content of the Tetrabiblos was collected from earlier sources; Ptolemy's achievement was to order his material in a systematic way, showing how the subject could, in his view, be rationalized. It is, indeed, presented as the second part of the study of astronomy of which the Almagest was the first, concerned with the influences of the celestial bodies in the sublunar sphere. Thus explanations of a sort are provided for the astrological effects of the planets, based upon their combined effects of heating, cooling, moistening, and drying. Ptolemy's astrological outlook was quite practical: he thought that astrology was like medicine, that is conjectural, because of the many variable factors to be taken into account: the race, country, and upbringing of a person affects an individual's personality as much if not more than the positions of the Sun, Moon, and planets at the precise moment of their birth, so Ptolemy saw astrology as something to be used in life but in no way relied on entirely. A collection of one hundred aphorisms about astrology called the Centiloquium, ascribed to Ptolemy, was widely reproduced and commented on by Arabic, Latin and Hebrew scholars, and often bound together in medieval manuscripts after the Tetrabiblos as a kind of summation. It is now believed to be a much later pseudoepigraphical composition. The identity and date of the actual author of the work, referred to now as Pseudo-Ptolemy, remains the subject of conjecture.

Music
Ptolemy also wrote an influential work, Harmonics, on music theory and the mathematics of music. After criticizing the approaches of his predecessors, Ptolemy argued for basing musical intervals on mathematical ratios (in contrast to the followers of Aristoxenus and in agreement with the followers of Pythagoras) backed up by empirical observation (in contrast to the overly theoretical approach of the Pythagoreans). Ptolemy wrote about how musical notes could be translated into mathematical equations and vice versa in Harmonics. This is called Pythagorean tuning because it was first discovered by Pythagoras. However, Pythagoras believed that the mathematics of music should be based on the specific ratio of 3:2 whereas Ptolemy merely believed that it should just generally involve tetrachords and octaves. He presented his own divisions of the tetrachord and the octave, which he derived with the help of a monochord. Ptolemy's astronomical interests also appeared in a discussion of the "music of the spheres". See: Ptolemy's intense diatonic scale.

Optics
His Optics is a work that survives only in a poor Arabic translation and in about twenty manuscripts of a Latin version of the Arabic, which was translated by Eugene of Palermo (c. 1154). In it Ptolemy writes about properties of light, including reflection, refraction, and colour. The work is a significant part of the early history of optics.[31] and influenced the more famous 11th century Optics by Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham). The work is also important for the early history of perception. Ptolemy combined the mathematical, philosophical and physiological traditions. He held an extramission-intromission theory of vision: the rays (or flux) from the eye formed a cone, the vertex being within the eye, and the base defining the visual field. The rays were sensitive, and conveyed information back to the observers intellect about the distance and orientation of surfaces. Size and shape were determined by the visual angle subtended at the eye combined with perceived distance and orientation. This was one of the early statements of size-distance invariance as a cause of perceptual size and shape constancy, a view supported by the Stoics.[32] Ptolemy offered explanations of many phenomena concerning illumination and colour, size, shape, movement and binocular vision. He also divided illusions into those caused by physical or optical factors and those caused by judgemental factors. He offered an obscure explanation of the sun or moon illusion (the enlarged apparent size on the horizon) based on the difficulty of looking upwards.[33][34]

Bartholomaeus Pitiscus

"Pitiscus" redirects here. For the crater, see Pitiscus (crater). For the scholar, see Samuel Pitiscus. Bartholomaeus Pitiscus (also Barthlemy, Bartholomeo, August 24, 1561 July 2, 1613) was a 16th century German trigonometrist, astronomer and theologian who first coined the word Trigonometry. Pitiscus was born to poor parents in Grnberg (Zielona Gra) in Lower Silesia, the part of Austrian-ruled Duchy of Glogau (Gogw). He studied theology in Zerbst and Heidelberg. A Calvinist, he was appointed to teach the ten year-old Frederick IV, Elector Palatine of the Rhine, by Frederick's Calvinist uncle Johann Casimir of Simmern, as Frederick's father had died in 1583. Pitiscus was subsequently appointed court chaplain at Breslau

(Wrocaw) and court preacher to Frederick. Pitiscus supported Frederick's subsequent measures against the Roman Catholic Church.

Pitiscus achieved fame with his influential work written in Latin, called Trigonometria: sive de solutione triangulorum tractatus brevis et perspicuus (1595, first edition printed in Heidelberg), which introduced[1] the word "trigonometry" to the English and French languages, translations of which had appeared in 1614 and 1619, respectively. It consists of five books on plane and spherical trigonometry. Pitiscus is sometimes credited with inventing the decimal point, the symbol separating integers from decimal fractions, which appears in his trigonometrical tables and was subsequently accepted by John Napier in his logarithmic papers (1614 and 1619). Pitiscus edited Thesaurus mathematicus (1613) in which he improved the trigonometric tables of Georg Joachim Rheticus and also corrected Rheticus Magnus Canon doctrin triangulorum. [2] Pitiscus died in Heidelberg. The lunar crater Pitiscus is named after him. The classical scholar Samuel Pitiscus (1637-1727) was his nephew.

Arab contributions to mathematics and the introduction of the Zero

Regional, Science, 4/22/1998

Arab contributions to human civilization are noteworthy. In arithmetic the style of writing digits from right to left is an evidence of its Arab origin. For instance, the numeral for five hundred in English should be written as 005, not as 500 according to English's left-to-right reading style. Another invention that revolutionized mathematics was the introduction of the number zero by Muhammad Bin Ahmad in 967 AD. Zero was introduced in the West as late as the beginning of the thirteenth century. Modern society takes the invention of the zero for granted, yet the Zero is a nontrivial concept, that allowed major mathematical breakthroughs. Arab civilizations also made a great contribution to fractions and to the principle of errors, which is employed to solve Algebra problems arithmetically. Concerning Algebra, al-Khawarzmi is credited with the first treatise. He solved Algebra equations of the first and second degree (known as quadratic equations, and are are prevelant in science and engineering) and also introduced the geometrical method of solving these equations. He also recognized that quadratic equations have two roots. His method was continued by Thabet Bin Qura, the translator of Ptolemy's works who developed Algebra and first realized application in geometry. By the 11th century the Arabs had founded, developed and perfected geometrical algebra and could solve equations of the third and fourth degree. Another outstanding Arab mathematician is Abul Wafa who created and successfully developed a branch of geometry which consists of problems leading to equations in Algebra of a higher degree than the second. He made a number of valuable contributions to polyhedral theory. Al-Karaki, of the 11th century is considered to be one of the greatest Arab mathematicians. He composed one arithmetic book and another on Algebra. In the two books, he developed an approximate method of finding square roots, a theory of indices, a theory of mathematical induction and a theory of intermediate quadratic equations. Arabs have excelled in geometry, starting with the transition of Euclid and conic section of Apolonios and they preserved the genuine works of these two Greek masters for the modern world, by the 9th century AD. and then started making new discoveries in this domain.

In his book translated by Roger Bacon, Ibn al-Haitham wrote a book on geometrical optics, dealing with problems that would be difficult to solve even now. It is also at the hand of the Arabs that the geometry of conic sections was developed to a great extent. However, Arab achievements in this field were crowned by the discovery made by Abu Jafar Muhammad Ibn Muhammad Ibn al-Hassan, known as Nassereddine al-Tusi. Al-Tusi separated trigonometry from astronomy. This contribution recognizes and explains weakness in Euclid's theory of parallels, and thereby may thus be credited as founder of non-Euclidian geometry.

Arabic mathematic

Recent research paints a new picture of the debt that we owe to Arabic/Islamic mathematics. Certainly many of the ideas which were previously thought to have been brilliant new conceptions due to European mathematicians of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are now known to have been developed by Arabic/Islamic mathematicians around four centuries earlier. In many respects the mathematics studied today is far closer in style to that of the Arabic/Islamic contribution than to that of the Greeks. There is a widely held view that, after a brilliant period for mathematics when the Greeks laid the foundations for modern mathematics, there was a period of stagnation before the Europeans took over where the Greeks left off at the beginning of the sixteenth century. The common perception of the period of 1000 years or so between the ancient Greeks and the European Renaissance is that little happened in the world of mathematics except that some Arabic translations of Greek texts were made which preserved the Greek learning so that it was available to the Europeans at the beginning of the sixteenth century. That such views should be generally held is of no surprise. Many leading historians of mathematics have contributed to the perception by either omitting any mention of Arabic/Islamic mathematics in the historical development of the subject or with statements such as that made by Duhem in ... Arabic science only reproduced the teachings received from Greek science. Before we proceed it is worth trying to define the period that this article covers and give an overall description to cover the mathematicians who contributed. The period we cover is easy to describe: it stretches from the end of the eighth century to about the middle of the fifteenth century. Giving a description to cover the mathematicians who contributed, however, is much harder. The works and are on "Islamic mathematics", similar to which uses the title the "Muslim contribution to mathematics". Other authors try the description "Arabic mathematics", see for example and however, certainly not all the mathematicians we wish to include were Muslims; some were Jews, some Christians, some of other faiths. Nor were all these mathematicians Arabs, but for convenience we will call our topic "Arab mathematics". The regions from which the "Arab mathematicians" came was centred on Iran/Iraq but varied with military conquest during the period. At its greatest extent it stretched to the west through Turkey and North Africa to include most of Spain, and to the east as far as the borders of China. The background to the mathematical developments which began in Baghdad around 800 is not well understood. Certainly there was an important influence which came from the Hindu mathematicians whose earlier development of the decimal system and numerals was important. There began a remarkable period of mathematical progress with al-Khwarizmi's work and the translations of Greek texts. This period begins under the Caliph Harun al-Rashid, the fifth Caliph of the Abbasid dynasty, whose reign began in 786. He encouraged scholarship and the first translations of Greek texts into Arabic, such as Euclid's Elements by al-Hajjaj, were made during al-Rashid's reign. The next Caliph, al-Ma'mun, encouraged learning even more strongly than his father al-Rashid, and he set up the House of Wisdom in

Baghdad which became the centre for both the work of translating and of of research. Al-Kindi (born 801) and the three Banu Musa brothers worked there, as did the famous translator Hunayn ibn Ishaq. We should emphasise that the translations into Arabic at this time were made by scientists and mathematicians such as those named above, not by language experts ignorant of mathematics, and the need for the translations was stimulated by the most advanced research of the time. It is important to realise that the translating was not done for its own sake, but was done as part of the current research effort. The most important Greek mathematical texts which were translated are listed in [17]:Of Euclid's works, the Elements, the Data, the Optics, the Phaenomena, and On Divisions were translated. Of Archimedes' works only two - Sphere and Cylinder and Measurement of the Circle - are known to have been translated, but these were sufficient to stimulate independent researches from the 9th to the 15th century. On the other hand, virtually all of Apollonius's works were translated, and of Diophantus and Menelaus one book each, the Arithmetica and the Sphaerica, respectively, were translated into Arabic. Finally, the translation of Ptolemy's Almagest furnished important astronomical material. The more minor Greek mathematical texts which were translated are also given in [17]:... Diocles' treatise on mirrors, Theodosius's Spherics, Pappus's work on mechanics, Ptolemy's Planisphaerium, and Hypsicles' treatises on regular polyhedra (the so-called Books XIV and XV of Euclid's Elements) ... Perhaps one of the most significant advances made by Arabic mathematics began at this time with the work of al-Khwarizmi, namely the beginnings of algebra. It is important to understand just how significant this new idea was. It was a revolutionary move away from the Greek concept of mathematics which was essentially geometry. Algebra was a unifying theory which allowed rational numbers, irrational numbers, geometrical magnitudes, etc., to all be treated as "algebraic objects". It gave mathematics a whole new development path so much broader in concept to that which had existed before, and provided a vehicle for future development of the subject. Another important aspect of the introduction of algebraic ideas was that it allowed mathematics to be applied to itself in a way which had not happened before. As Rashed writes in Al-Khwarizmi's successors undertook a systematic application of arithmetic to algebra, algebra to arithmetic, both to trigonometry, algebra to the Euclidean theory of numbers, algebra to geometry, and geometry to algebra. This was how the creation of polynomial algebra, combinatorial analysis, numerical analysis, the numerical solution of equations, the new elementary theory of numbers, and the geometric construction of equations arose. Let us follow the development of algebra for a moment and look at al-Khwarizmi's successors. About forty years after al-Khwarizmi is the work of al-Mahani (born 820), who conceived the idea of reducing geometrical problems such as duplicating the cube to problems in algebra. Abu Kamil (born 850) forms an important link in the development of algebra between al-Khwarizmi and al-Karaji. Despite not using symbols, but writing powers of x in words, he had begun to understand what we would write in symbols as xn.xm = xm+n. Let us remark that symbols did not appear in Arabic mathematics until much later. Ibn al-Banna and al-Qalasadi used symbols in the 15th century and, although we do not know exactly when their use began, we know that symbols were used at least a century before this. Al-Karaji (born 953) is seen by many as the first person to completely free algebra from geometrical operations and to replace them with the arithmetical type of operations which are at the core of algebra today. He was first to define the monomials x, x2, x3, ... and 1/x, 1/x2, 1/x3, ... and to give rules for products of any two of these. He started a school of algebra which flourished for several hundreds of years. Al-Samawal, nearly 200 years later, was an important member of al-Karaji's school. Al-Samawal (born 1130) was the first to give the new topic of algebra a precise description when he wrote that it was concerned:... with operating on unknowns using all the arithmetical tools, in the same way as the arithmetician operates on the known.

Omar Khayyam (born 1048) gave a complete classification of cubic equations with geometric solutions found by means of intersecting conic sections. Khayyam also wrote that he hoped to give a full description of the algebraic solution of cubic equations in a later work [18]:If the opportunity arises and I can succeed, I shall give all these fourteen forms with all their branches and cases, and how to distinguish whatever is possible or impossible so that a paper, containing elements which are greatly useful in this art will be prepared. Sharaf al-Din al-Tusi (born 1135), although almost exactly the same age as al-Samawal, does not follow the general development that came through al-Karaji's school of algebra but rather follows Khayyam's application of algebra to geometry. He wrote a treatise on cubic equations, which [11]:... represents an essential contribution to another algebra which aimed to study curves by means of equations, thus inaugurating the beginning of algebraic geometry. Let us give other examples of the development of Arabic mathematics. Returning to the House of Wisdom in Baghdad in the 9th century, one mathematician who was educated there by the Banu Musa brothers was Thabit ibn Qurra (born 836). He made many contributions to mathematics, but let us consider for the moment consider his contributions to number theory. He discovered a beautiful theorem which allowed pairs of amicable numbers to be found, that is two numbers such that each is the sum of the proper divisors of the other. Al-Baghdadi (born 980) looked at a slight variant of Thabit ibn Qurra's theorem, while al-Haytham (born 965) seems to have been the first to attempt to classify all even perfect numbers (numbers equal to the sum of their proper divisors) as those of the form 2k-1(2k - 1) where 2k - 1 is prime. Al-Haytham, is also the first person that we know to state Wilson's theorem, namely that if p is prime then 1+(p-1)! is divisible by p. It is unclear whether he knew how to prove this result. It is called Wilson's theorem because of a comment made by Waring in 1770 that John Wilson had noticed the result. There is no evidence that John Wilson knew how to prove it and most certainly Waring did not. Lagrange gave the first proof in 1771 and it should be noticed that it is more than 750 years after alHaytham before number theory surpasses this achievement of Arabic mathematics. Continuing the story of amicable numbers, from which we have taken a diversion, it is worth noting that they play a large role in Arabic mathematics. Al-Farisi (born 1260) gave a new proof of Thabit ibn Qurra's theorem, introducing important new ideas concerning factorisation and combinatorial methods. He also gave the pair of amicable numbers 17296, 18416 which have been attributed to Euler, but we know that these were known earlier than al-Farisi, perhaps even by Thabit ibn Qurra himself. Although outside our time range for Arabic mathematics in this article, it is worth noting that in the 17th century the Arabic mathematician Mohammed Baqir Yazdi gave the pair of amicable number 9,363,584 and 9,437,056 still many years before Euler's contribution. Let us turn to the different systems of counting which were in use around the 10th century in Arabic countries. There were three different types of arithmetic used around this period and, by the end of the 10th century, authors such as al-Baghdadi were writing texts comparing the three systems. 1. Finger-reckoning arithmetic. This system derived from counting on the fingers with the numerals written entirely in words; this finger-reckoning arithmetic was the system used by the business community. Mathematicians such as Abu'l-Wafa (born 940) wrote several treatises using this system. Abu'l-Wafa himself was an expert in the use of Indian numerals but these:... did not find application in business circles and among the population of the Eastern Caliphate for a long time. Hence he wrote his text using finger-reckoning arithmetic since this was the system used by the business community. 2. Sexagesimal system. The second of the three systems was the sexagesimal system, with numerals denoted by letters of the Arabic alphabet. It came originally from the Babylonians and was most frequently used by the Arabic mathematicians in astronomical work. 3. Indian numeral system. The third system was the arithmetic of the Indian numerals and fractions with the decimal place-value

system. The numerals used were taken over from India, but there was not a standard set of symbols. Different parts of the Arabic world used slightly different forms of the numerals. At first the Indian methods were used by the Arabs with a dust board. A dust board was needed because the methods required the moving of numbers around in the calculation and rubbing some out as the calculation proceeded. The dust board allowed this to be done in the same sort of way that one can use a blackboard, chalk and a blackboard eraser. However, al-Uqlidisi (born 920) showed how to modify the methods for pen and paper use. Al-Baghdadi also contributed to improvements in the decimal system. It was this third system of calculating which allowed most of the advances in numerical methods by the Arabs. It allowed the extraction of roots by mathematicians such as Abu'l-Wafa and Omar Khayyam (born 1048). The discovery of the binomial theorem for integer exponents by al-Karaji (born 953) was a major factor in the development of numerical analysis based on the decimal system. Al-Kashi (born 1380) contributed to the development of decimal fractions not only for approximating algebraic numbers, but also for real numbers such as . His contribution to decimal fractions is so major that for many years he was considered as their inventor. Although not the first to do so, al-Kashi gave an algorithm for calculating nth roots which is a special case of the methods given many centuries later by Ruffini and Horner. Although the Arabic mathematicians are most famed for their work on algebra, number theory and number systems, they also made considerable contributions to geometry, trigonometry and mathematical astronomy. Ibrahim ibn Sinan (born 908), who introduced a method of integration more general than that of Archimedes, and al-Quhi (born 940) were leading figures in a revival and continuation of Greek higher geometry in the Islamic world. These mathematicians, and in particular al-Haytham, studied optics and investigated the optical properties of mirrors made from conic sections. Omar Khayyam combined the use of trigonometry and approximation theory to provide methods of solving algebraic equations by geometrical means. Astronomy, time-keeping and geography provided other motivations for geometrical and trigonometrical research. For example Ibrahim ibn Sinan and his grandfather Thabit ibn Qurra both studied curves required in the construction of sundials. Abu'l-Wafa and Abu Nasr Mansur both applied spherical geometry to astronomy and also used formulas involving sin and tan. Al-Biruni (born 973) used the sin formula in both astronomy and in the calculation of longitudes and latitudes of many cities. Again both astronomy and geography motivated al-Biruni's extensive studies of projecting a hemisphere onto the plane. Thabit ibn Qurra undertook both theoretical and observational work in astronomy. Al-Battani (born 850) made accurate observations which allowed him to improve on Ptolemy's data for the sun and the moon. Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (born 1201), like many other Arabic mathematicians, based his theoretical astronomy on Ptolemy's work but al-Tusi made the most significant development of Ptolemy's model of the planetary system up to the development of the heliocentric model in the time of Copernicus. Many of the Arabic mathematicians produced tables of trigonometric functions as part of their studies of astronomy. These include Ulugh Beg (born 1393) and al-Kashi. The construction of astronomical instruments such as the astrolabe was also a speciality of the Arabs. Al-Mahani used an astrolabe while Ahmed (born 835), al-Khazin (born 900), Ibrahim ibn Sinan, al-Quhi, Abu Nasr Mansur (born 965), alBiruni, and others, all wrote important treatises on the astrolabe. Sharaf al-Din al-Tusi (born 1201) invented the linear astrolabe. The importance of the Arabic mathematicians in the development of the astrolabe is described in [17]:The astrolabe, whose mathematical theory is based on the stereographic projection of the sphere, was invented in late antiquity, but its extensive development in Islam made it the pocket watch of the medievals. In its original form, it required a different plate of horizon coordinates for each latitude, but in the 11th century the Spanish Muslim astronomer az-Zarqallu invented a single plate that worked for all latitudes. Slightly earlier, astronomers in the East had experimented with plane projections of the sphere, and al-Biruni invented such a projection that could be used to produce a map of a hemisphere. The culminating masterpiece was the astrolabe of the Syrian Ibn ash-Shatir (1305-75), a mathematical tool that could be used to solve all the standard problems

What are the contributions of Johann muller in trigonometry?

REGIOMONTANUS (1436-1476), German astronomer, was born at Konigsberg in Franconia on the 6th of June 1436. The son of a miller, his name originally was Johann Muller, but he called himself, from his birthplace, Joh. de Monteregio, an appellation which became gradually modified into Regiomontanus. At Vienna, from 1452, he was the pupil and associate of George Purbach (1423-1461), and they jointly undertook a reform of astronomy rendered necessary by the errors they detected in the Alphonsine Tables. In this they were much hindered by the lack of correct translations of Ptolemy's works; and in 1462 Regiomontanus accompanied Cardinal Bessarion to Italy in search of authentic manuscripts. He rapidly mastered Greek at Rome and Ferrara, lectured on Alfraganus at Padua, and completed at Venice in 1463 Purbach's Epitome in Cl. Ptolemaei magnam compositionem (printed at Venice in 1496), and his own De Triangulis (Nuremberg, 1533), the earliest work treating of trigonometry as a substantive science. A quarrel with George of Trebizond, the blunders in whose translation of the Almagest he had pointed out, obliged him to quit Rome precipitately in 1468. He repaired to Vienna, and was thence summoned to Buda by Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary, for the purpose of collating Greek manuscripts at a handsome salary. He also finished his Tabulae Directionum(Nuremberg, '475), essentially an astrological work, but containing a valuable table of tangents. An outbreak of war, meanwhile, diverted the king's attention from learning, and in 1471 Regiomontanus settled at Nuremberg. Bernhard Walther, a rich patrician, became his pupil and patron; and they together equipped the first European observatory, for which Regiomontanus himself constructed instruments of an improved type (described in his posthumous Scripta, Nuremberg, 1544). His observations of the great comet of January 1472 supplied the basis of modern cometary astronomy. At a printing-press established in Walther's house by Regiomontanus, Purbach's Theoricae planetarum novae was published in 1472 or 1473; a series of popular calendars issued from it, and in 1474 a volume ofEphemerides calculated by Regiomontanus for thirty-two years (1474-1506), in which the method of "lunar distances," for determining the longitude at sea, was recommended and explained. In 1472 Regiomontanus was summoned to Rome by Pope Sixtus IV. to aid in the reform of the calendar; and there he died, most likely of the plague, on the 6th of July 1476.

Abraham de Moivre
Abraham de Moivre, (born May 26, 1667, Vitry, Fr.died Nov. 27, 1754, London), French mathematician who was a pioneer in the development of analytic trigonometry and in the theory of probability. A French Huguenot, de Moivre was jailed as a Protestant upon the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. When he was released shortly thereafter, he fled to England. In London he became a close friend of Sir Isaac Newton and the astronomer Edmond Halley. De Moivre was elected to the Royal Society of London in 1697 and later to the Berlin and Paris academies. Despite his distinction as a mathematician, he never succeeded in securing a permanent position but eked out a precarious living by working as a tutor and a consultant on gambling and insurance. De Moivre expanded his paper De mensura sortis (written in 1711), which appeared in Philosophical Transactions, into The Doctrine of Chances (1718). Although the modern theory of probability had begun with the unpublished correspondence (1654) between Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat and the treatise De Ratiociniis in Ludo Aleae (1657; On Ratiocination in Dice Games) by Christiaan Huygens of Holland, de Moivres book greatly advanced probability study. The definition of statistical independencenamely, that the probability of a compound event composed of the intersection of statistically independent events is the product of the probabilities of its componentswas first stated in de Moivres Doctrine. Many problems in dice and

other games were included, some of which appeared in the Swiss mathematician Jakob (Jacques) Bernoullis Ars conjectandi (1713; The Conjectural Arts), which was published before de Moivres Doctrine but after his De mensura. He derived the principles of probability from the mathematical expectation of events, just the reverse of present-day practice. De Moivres second important work on probability was Miscellanea Analytica (1730; Analytical Miscellany). He was the first to use the probability integral in which the integrand is the exponential of a negative quadratic,

He originated Stirlings formula, incorrectly attributed to James Stirling (16921770) of England, which states that for a large number n, n! equals approximately (2n)1/2e-nnn; that is, n factorial (a product of integers with values descending from n to 1) approximates the square root of 2n, times the exponential of -n, times n to the nth power. In 1733 he used Stirlings formula to derive the normal frequency curve as an approximation of the binomial law. De Moivre was one of the first mathematicians to use complex numbers in trigonometry. The formula known by his name, (cos x + i sin x)n = cos nx + i sin nx, was instrumental in bringing trigonometry out of the realm of geometry and into that of analysis.

Leonhard Euler
Leonhard Euler (1707-1783) was arguably the greatest mathematician of the eighteenth century (His closest competitor for that title is Lagrange) and one of the most prolific of all time; his publication list of 886 papers and books may be exceeded only by Paul Erds. Euler's complete works fill about 90 volumes. Remarkably, much of this output dates from the the last two decades of his life, when he was totally blind. Euler's important contributions were so numerous that terms like "Euler's formula" or "Euler's theorem" can mean many different things depending on context. Just in mechanics, one has Euler angles (to specify the orientation of a rigid body), Euler's theorem (that every rotation has an axis), Euler's equations for motion of fluids, and the Euler-Lagrange equation (that comes from calculus of variations). The "Euler's formula" with which most American calculus students are familiar defines the exponentials of imaginary numbers in terms of trigonometric functions. But there is another "Euler's formula" that (to use the modern terminology adopted long after Euler's death) gives the values of the Riemann zeta function at positive even integers in terms of Bernoulli numbers. There are both Euler numbers and Eulerian numbers, and they aren't the same thing. Euler's study of the bridges of Knigsberg can be seen as the beginning of combinatorial topology (which is why the Euler characteristic bears his name).

Though born and educated in Basel, Switzerland, Euler spent most of his career in St. Petersburg and Berlin. He joined the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences in 1727. In 1741 he went to Berlin at the invitation of Frederick the Great, but he and Frederick never got on well and in 1766 he returned to St. Petersburg, where he remained until his death. Euler's prolific output caused a tremendous problem of backlog: the St. Petersburg Academy continued publishing his work posthumously for more than 30 years. Euler married twice and had 13 children, though all but five of them died young. Euler's powers of memory and concentration were legendary. He could recite the entire Aeneid word-for-word. He was not troubled by interruptions or distractions; in fact, he did much of his work with his young children playing at his feet. He was able to do prodigious calculations in his head, a necessity after he went blind. The contemporary French mathematician Condorcet tells the story of two of Euler's students who had independently summed seventeen terms of a complicated infinite series, only to disagree in the fiftieth decimal place; Euler settled the dispute by recomputing the sum in his head.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF TRIGONOMETRY

The beginnings of spherical trigonometry can be traced to the work of the astronomer Hipparchus of Nicaea (180-125 BC) . He has come to be known as "The father of trigonometry". One of the uses of trigonometry in Greek and pre-Greek times was to tell the time of day or period of the year by the positions of various stars. Astronomers compiled charts of the angular measure between various stars. Hipparchus systematically studied and measured the length of various chords in circles. He prepared extensive tables of chords at 0,5 degree intervals for all central angles from 0,5-180 degrees. The word chord originates from the Greek word Chord, wich means intestines. Animals intestines were often used as the string on a bow.

Angle V A B The angle V decides the chorde AB It was common practice in ancient Greece, when solving triangles, to assume them to be inscribed in a sircle. Then their sides became chords of the circle. As a mathematician, Hipparchus introdused to Greek science the Babylonian method of dividing the circle into 360 degrees. The Alexandrian astronomer Ptolemy, who worked in the 2nd century AD, continued Hipparchus` work in the computation of arcs and chords of great circles. Greek trigonometry reached its highest point with Ptolemy, whose major work in the subject has come to be called "The Almagest"(The Greatest). It is often difficult to determine which findings in the book are those of Ptolemy, and which are those of Hipparchus, because most of Hipparchus` work is lost. Still it is likely that Ptolemy did extend some of the work of Hipparchus through his own observations, apparently using somewhat similar instruments.

The first book of "The Almagest" tables of chords for all arcs from 0-180 degrees, at 0,5 degrees intervals to at least five places of decimals. This table is belived to be the table prepared by Hipparchus. In "The Almagest" Ptolemy also obtained relationships among the angles and sides of spherical triangles, that are the eqvivalent of many basic relationships and identities of trigonometry today. Further development of trigonometry leeds us to India and the mathematician and astronomer Aryabhata. Aryabhata calculated the length of half-cords to an angle. If we compare the method used by Hipparchus and the method used by Aryabhata, we will find that the development approaches our definition of sinus. The Hindu mathematicians referred to the half-chord as ardha-jya, later abbreviated to jya. Arab translators turned this phonetically into jiba, which is a meaningless word in Arabic. According to Arabic practice of omitting the vowels in writing, it turned into jb. When the Englishman Robert of Chester translated "The Almagest" into Latin, he assumed jb to be an abbreviation of jaib, and substituted the word for its Latin eqvivalent sinus around the year 1150. The names of the other trigonometric functions have less complicated interpretations. The present name of tangens originates from the Latin word tangere, which means "to touch", was introduced in 1583 by the Dane Thomas Fincke. The name cosinus was suggested in 1620 by the English mathematician and astronomer Edmund Gunter. It replaces the older term sinus comlementi, which is sinus of the complementary angle. Today plane trigonometry is ordinarely approached through the use of right triangles, allthough the subject actually deals with any type of triangle. In this approach, given an angle A that is between 0 and 90 degrees, a right triangle is constructed having A as one of its angles. Since the sum of three angles of a plane triangle is always 180 degrees, the third angle must be 90-A degrees. The side opposite the right angle is labelled the hypotenuse, the side opposite angle A the opposite, and the side next to angle A the adjacent.

B hypotenuse opposite C adjacent A This is used to forme various functions of angle A, and the Pythagorean theorem. Pythagorean theorem: (hypotenuse)^2 = (opposite)^2 + (adjacent)^2 Tangent A = Opposite Adjacent

Sine A = Opposite Hypotenuse Cosine A = Adjacent Hypotenuse

Values of the trigonometric functions of different angles have been tabulated, and the tables allow the theory of plane trigonometry to be applied to problems in such pursuits as surveying and engineering.

What is the contribution of Georg Joachim Iserin in trigonometry?

Rheticus had facilitated the publication of Copernicus' work, and had clearly understood the basic principles of the new planetary theory. In 1551, with the help of six assistants, Rheticus recalculated and produced the Opus Palatinum de Triangulis (Canon of the Science of Triangles) which became the first publication of tables of all six trigonometric functions. This was intended to be an introduction to his greatest work, The Science of Triangles. When he died his work was still unfinished, but like Copernicus, Rheticus acquired a student, Valentinus Otho who supervised the calculation (by hand) of some one hundred thousand ratios to at least ten decimal places filling some 1,500 pages. This was finally completed in 1596. These tables were accurate enough to be used as the basis for astronomical calculations up to the early 20th century.

History of trigonometry
Trigonometry is a field of mathematics first compiled by 2nd century BCE by the Greek mathematician Hipparchus. The history of trigonometry and of trigonometric functions follows the general lines of the history of mathematics. Early study of triangles can be traced to the 2nd millennium BC, in Egyptian mathematics (Rhind Mathematical Papyrus) and Babylonian mathematics. Systematic study of trigonometric functions began in Hellenistic mathematics, reaching India as part of Hellenistic astronomy. In Indian astronomy, the study of trigonometric functions flowered in the Gupta period, especially due to Aryabhata (6th century). During the Middle Ages, the study of trigonometry continued in Islamic mathematics, whence it was adopted as a separate subject in the Latin West beginning in the Renaissance with Regiomontanus. The development of modern trigonometry shifted during the western Age of Enlightenment, beginning with 17th-century mathematics (Isaac Newton and James Stirling) and reaching its modern form with Leonhard Euler (1748).

Etymology
The term "trigonometry" derives from the Greek "" ("trigonometria"), meaning "triangle measuring", from "" (triangle) + "" (to measure). Our modern word "sine", is derived from the Latin word sinus, which means "bay", "bosom" or "fold", translating Arabic jayb. The Arabic term is in origin a corruption of Sanskrit jv "chord". Sanskrit jv in learned usage was a synonym of jy "chord", originally the term for "bow-string". Sanskrit jv was loaned into Arabic as jiba.[1][2][clarification needed] This term was then transformed[2] into the genuine Arabic word jayb, meaning "bosom, fold, bay", either by the Arabs or by a mistake[1] of the European translators such as Robert of Chester (perhaps because the words were written without vowels[1]), who translated jayb into Latin as sinus.[3] Particularly Fibonacci's sinus rectus arcus proved influential in establishing the term sinus.[4] The words "minute" and "second" are derived from the Latin phrases partes minutae primae and partes minutae secundae.[5] These roughly translate to "first small parts" and "second small parts".

Development
Early trigonometry

The ancient Egyptians and Babylonians had known of theorems on the ratios of the sides of similar triangles for many centuries. But pre-Hellenic societies lacked the concept of an angle measure and consequently, the sides of triangles were studied instead, a field that would be better called "trilaterometry".[6] The Babylonian astronomers kept detailed records on the rising and setting of stars, the motion of the planets, and the solar and lunar eclipses, all of which required familiarity with angular distances measured on the celestial sphere.[2] Based on one interpretation of the Plimpton 322 cuneiform tablet (c. 1900 BC), some have even asserted that the ancient Babylonians had a table of secants.[7] There is, however, much debate as to whether it is a table of Pythagorean triples, a solution of quadratic equations, or a trigonometric table. The Egyptians, on the other hand, used a primitive form of trigonometry for building pyramids in the 2nd millennium BC.[2] The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus, written by the Egyptian scribe Ahmes (c. 16801620 BC), contains the following problem related to trigonometry:[2]
"If a pyramid is 250 cubits high and the side of its base 360 cubits long, what is its seked?"

Ahmes' solution to the problem is the ratio of half the side of the base of the pyramid to its height, or the run-torise ratio of its face. In other words, the quantity he found for the seked is the cotangent of the angle to the base of the pyramid and its face.[2]

[edit] Greek mathematics

The chord of an angle subtends the arc of the angle.

Ancient Greek and Hellenistic mathematicians made use of the chord. Given a circle and an arc on the circle, the chord is the line that subtends the arc. A chord's perpendicular bisector passes through the center of the circle and bisects the angle. One half of the bisected chord is the sine of the bisected angle, that is,

and consequently the sine function is also known as the "half-chord". Due to this relationship, a number of trigonometric identities and theorems that are known today were also known to Hellenistic mathematicians, but in their equivalent chord form.[8] Although there is no trigonometry in the works of Euclid and Archimedes, in the strict sense of the word, there are theorems presented in a geometric way (rather than a trigonometric way) that are equivalent to specific trigonometric laws or formulas.[6] For instance, propositions twelve and thirteen of book two of the Elements are the laws of cosines for obtuse and acute angles, respectively. Theorems on the lengths of chords are applications of the law of sines. And Archimedes' theorem on broken chords is equivalent to formulas for sines of sums and differences of angles.[6] To compensate for the lack of a table of chords, mathematicians of Aristarchus' time would sometimes use the statement that, in modern notation, sin /sin < / < tan /tan whenever 0 < < < 90, now known as Aristarchus' inequality.[9] The first trigonometric table was apparently compiled by Hipparchus of Nicaea (180 125 BC), who is now consequently known as "the father of trigonometry."[10] Hipparchus was the first to tabulate the corresponding values of arc and chord for a series of angles.[4][10] Although it is not known when the systematic use of the 360 circle came into mathematics, it is known that the systematic introduction of the 360 circle came a little after Aristarchus of Samos composed On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and Moon (ca. 260 BC), since he measured an angle in terms of a fraction of a quadrant.[9] It seems that the systematic use of the 360 circle is largely due to Hipparchus and his table of chords. Hipparchus may have taken the idea of this division from Hypsicles who had earlier divided the day into 360 parts, a division of the day that may have been suggested by Babylonian astronomy.[11] In ancient astronomy, the zodiac had been divided into twelve "signs" or thirty-six "decans". A seasonal cycle of roughly 360 days could have corresponded to the signs and decans of the zodiac by dividing each sign into thirty parts and each decan into ten parts.[5] It is due to the Babylonian sexagesimal numeral system that each degree is divided into sixty minutes and each minute is divided into sixty seconds.[5]

Menelaus' theorem

Menelaus of Alexandria (ca. 100 AD) wrote in three books his Sphaerica. In Book I, he established a basis for spherical triangles analogous to the Euclidean basis for plane triangles.[8] He establishes a theorem that is without Euclidean analogue, that two spherical triangles are congruent if corresponding angles are equal, but he did not distinguish between congruent and symmetric spherical triangles.[8] Another theorem that he establishes is that the sum of the angles of a spherical triangle is greater than 180.[8] Book II of Sphaerica applies spherical geometry to astronomy. And Book III contains the "theorem of Menelaus".[8] He further gave his famous "rule of six quantities".[12] Later, Claudius Ptolemy (ca. 90 ca. 168 AD) expanded upon Hipparchus' Chords in a Circle in his Almagest, or the Mathematical Syntaxis. The Almagest is primarily a work on astronomy, and astronomy relies on trigonometry. Ptolemy's table of chords gives the lengths of chords of a circle of diameter 120 as a function of the number of degrees n in the corresponding arc of the circle, for n ranging from 1/2 to 180 by increments of 1/2.[13] The thirteen books of the Almagest are the most influential and significant trigonometric work of all antiquity.[14] A theorem that was central to Ptolemy's calculation of chords was what is still known today as Ptolemy's theorem, that the sum of the products of the opposite sides of a cyclic quadrilateral is equal to the product of the diagonals. A special case of Ptolemy's theorem appeared as proposition 93 in Euclid's Data. Ptolemy's theorem leads to the equivalent of the four sum-and-difference formulas for sine and cosine that are today known as Ptolemy's formulas, although Ptolemy himself used chords instead of sine and cosine.[14] Ptolemy further derived the equivalent of the half-angle formula

[14]

Ptolemy used these results to create his trigonometric tables, but whether these tables were derived from Hipparchus' work cannot be determined.[14] Neither the tables of Hipparchus nor those of Ptolemy have survived to the present day, although descriptions by other ancient authors leave little doubt that they once existed.[15]

Indian mathematics

Statue of Aryabhata on the grounds of IUCAA, Pune.

The next significant developments of trigonometry were in India. Influential works from the 4th5th century, known as the Siddhantas (of which there were five, the most complete survivor of which is the Surya Siddhanta[16]) first defined the sine as the modern relationship between half an angle and half a chord, while also defining the cosine, versine, and inverse sine.[17] Soon afterwards, another Indian mathematician and astronomer, Aryabhata (476550 AD), collected and expanded upon the developments of the Siddhantas in an important work called the Aryabhatiya.[18] The Siddhantas and the Aryabhatiya contain the earliest surviving tables of sine values and versine (1 cosine) values, in 3.75 intervals from 0 to 90, to an accuracy of 4 decimal places.[19] They used the words jya for sine, kojya for cosine, utkrama-jya for versine, and otkram jya for inverse sine. The words jya and kojya eventually became sine and cosine respectively after a mistranslation described above. In the 7th century, Bhaskara I produced a formula for calculating the sine of an acute angle without the use of a table. He also gave the following approximation formula for sin(x), which had a relative error of less than 1.9%:

Later in the 7th century, Brahmagupta redeveloped the formula

(also derived earlier, as mentioned above) and the Brahmagupta interpolation formula for computing sine values.[20] Another later Indian author on trigonometry was Bhaskara II in the 12th century. Bhaskara II developed spherical trigonometry, and discovered many trigonometric results. Bhaskara II was the first to discover

and

trigonometric results like:

Madhava (c. 1400) made early strides in the analysis of trigonometric functions and their infinite series expansions. He developed the concepts of the power series and Taylor series, and produced the power series expansions of sine, cosine, tangent, and arctangent.[21][22] Using the Taylor series approximations of sine and cosine, he produced a sine table to 12 decimal places of accuracy and a cosine table to 9 decimal places of accuracy. He also gave the power series of and the , radius, diameter, and circumference of a circle in terms of trigonometric functions. His works were expanded by his followers at the Kerala School up to the 16th century.[21][22]
No. Series Name Western discoverers of the series and approximate dates of discovery[23] Isaac Newton (1670) and Wilhelm Leibniz (1676) Isaac Newton (1670) and Wilhelm Leibniz (1676) James Gregory (1671) and Wilhelm Leibniz (1676)

sin x = x x3 / 3! + x5 / 5! x7 / 7! + 1 ... cos x = 1 x2 / 2! + x4 / 4! x6 / 6! + 2 ... tan1x = x x3 / 3 + x5 / 5 x7 / 7 + 3 ...

Madhava's sine series

Madhava's cosine series Madhava's arctangent series

The Indian text the Yuktibh contains proof for the expansion of the sine and cosine functions and the derivation and proof of the power series for inverse tangent, discovered by Madhava. The Yuktibh also contains rules for finding the sines and the cosines of the sum and difference of two angles.
[edit] Islamic mathematics

Page from The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing by Muhammad ibn Ms al-Khwrizm (c. AD 820)

The Indian works were later translated and expanded in the medieval Islamic world by Muslim mathematicians of mostly Persian and Arab descent, who enunciated a large number of theorems which freed the subject of trigonometry from dependence upon the complete quadrilateral, as was the case in Hellenistic mathematics due to the application of Menelaus' theorem. According to E. S. Kennedy, it was after this development in Islamic mathematics that "the first real trigonometry emerged, in the sense that only then did the object of study become the spherical or plane triangle, its sides and angles."[24] In addition to Indian works, Hellenistic methods dealing with spherical triangles were also known, particularly the method of Menelaus of Alexandria, who developed "Menelaus' theorem" to deal with spherical problems.[8][25] However, E. S. Kennedy points out that while it was possible in pre-lslamic mathematics to compute the magnitudes of a spherical figure, in principle, by use of the table of chords and Menelaus' theorem, the application of the theorem to spherical problems was very difficult in practice.[26] In order to observe holy days on the Islamic calendar in which timings were determined by phases of the moon, astronomers initially used Menalaus' method to calculate the place of the moon and stars, though this method proved to be clumsy and difficult. It involved setting up two intersecting right triangles; by applying Menelaus' theorem it was possible to solve one of the six sides, but only if the other five sides were known. To tell the time from the sun's altitude, for instance, repeated applications of Menelaus' theorem were required. For medieval Islamic astronomers, there was an obvious challenge to find a simpler trigonometric method.[27]

In the early 9th century, Muhammad ibn Ms al-Khwrizm produced accurate sine and cosine tables, and the first table of tangents. He was also a pioneer in spherical trigonometry. In 830, Habash al-Hasib al-Marwazi produced the first table of cotangents.[28][29] Muhammad ibn Jbir al-Harrn al-Battn (Albatenius) (853-929) discovered the reciprocal functions of secant and cosecant, and produced the first table of cosecants for each degree from 1 to 90.[29] By the 10th century, in the work of Ab al-Waf' al-Bzjn, Muslim mathematicians were using all six trigonometric functions.[30] Abu al-Wafa had sine tables in 0.25 increments, to 8 decimal places of accuracy, and accurate tables of tangent values.[30] He also developed the following trigonometric formula:[31]
(a special case of Ptolemy's angle-addition formula; see above)

In his original text, Ab al-Waf' states: "If we want that, we multiply the given sine by the cosine minutes, and the result is half the sine of the double".[31] Ab al-Waf also established the angle addition and difference identities presented with complete proofs:[31]

For the second one, the text states: "We multiply the sine of each of the two arcs by the cosine of the other minutes. If we want the sine of the sum, we add the products, if we want the sine of the difference, we take their difference".[31] He also discovered the law of sines for spherical trigonometry:[28]

Also in the late 10th and early 11th centuries, the Egyptian astronomer Ibn Yunus performed many careful trigonometric calculations and demonstrated the following trigonometric identity[32]:

Al-Jayyani (9891079) of al-Andalus wrote The book of unknown arcs of a sphere, which is considered "the first treatise on spherical trigonometry" in its modern form.[33] It "contains formulae for right-handed triangles, the general law of sines, and the solution of a spherical triangle by means of the polar triangle." This treatise later had a "strong influence on European mathematics", and his "definition of ratios as numbers" and "method of solving a spherical triangle when all sides are unknown" are likely to have influenced Regiomontanus.[33] The method of triangulation was first developed by Muslim mathematicians, who applied it to practical uses such as surveying[34] and Islamic geography, as described by Abu Rayhan Biruni in the early 11th century. Biruni himself introduced triangulation techniques to measure the size of the Earth and the distances between various places.[35] In the late 11th century, Omar Khayym (10481131) solved cubic equations using approximate numerical solutions found by interpolation in trigonometric tables. In the 13th century, Nasr alDn al-Ts was the first to treat trigonometry as a mathematical discipline independent from astronomy, and he developed spherical trigonometry into its present form.[29] He listed the six distinct cases of a right-angled triangle in spherical trigonometry, and in his On the Sector Figure, he stated the law of sines for plane and

spherical triangles, discovered the law of tangents for spherical triangles, and provided proofs for both these laws.[36] In the 15th century, Jamshd al-Ksh provided the first explicit statement of the law of cosines in a form suitable for triangulation.[citation needed] In France, the law of cosines is still referred to as the theorem of Al-Kashi. He also gave trigonometric tables of values of the sine function to four sexagesimal digits (equivalent to 8 decimal places) for each 1 of argument with differences to be added for each 1/60 of 1.[citation needed] Ulugh Beg also gives accurate tables of sines and tangents correct to 8 decimal places around the same time.[citation needed]
[edit] Chinese mathematics

Guo Shoujing (12311316)

In China, Aryabhata's table of sines were translated into the Chinese mathematical book of the Kaiyuan Zhanjing, compiled in 718 AD during the Tang Dynasty.[37] Although the Chinese excelled in other fields of mathematics such as solid geometry, binomial theorem, and complex algebraic formulas, early forms of trigonometry were not as widely appreciated as in the earlier Greek, Hellenistic, Indian and Islamic worlds.[38] Instead, the early Chinese used an empirical substitute known as chong cha, while practical use of plane trigonometry in using the sine, the tangent, and the secant were known.[37] However, this embryonic state of trigonometry in China slowly began to change and advance during the Song Dynasty (9601279), where Chinese mathematicians began to express greater emphasis for the need of spherical trigonometry in calendrical science and astronomical calculations.[37] The polymath Chinese scientist, mathematician and official Shen Kuo (10311095) used trigonometric functions to solve mathematical problems of chords and arcs.[37] Victor J. Katz writes that in Shen's formula "technique of intersecting circles", he created an approximation of the arc s of a circle given the diameter d, sagita v, and length c of the chord subtending the arc, the length of which he approximated as[39]

Sal Restivo writes that Shen's work in the lengths of arcs of circles provided the basis for spherical trigonometry developed in the 13th century by the mathematician and astronomer Guo Shoujing (12311316).[40] As the historians L. Gauchet and Joseph Needham state, Guo Shoujing used spherical trigonometry in his calculations to improve the calendar system and Chinese astronomy.[37][41] Along with a later 17th century Chinese illustration of Guo's mathematical proofs, Needham states that:

Guo used a quadrangular spherical pyramid, the basal quadrilateral of which consisted of one equatorial and one ecliptic arc, together with two meridian arcs, one of which passed through the summer solstice point...By such methods he was able to obtain the du l (degrees of equator corresponding to degrees of ecliptic), the ji cha (values of chords for given ecliptic arcs), and the cha l (difference between chords of arcs differing by 1 degree).[42] Despite the achievements of Shen and Guo's work in trigonometry, another substantial work in Chinese trigonometry would not be published again until 1607, with the dual publication of Euclid's Elements by Chinese official and astronomer Xu Guangqi (15621633) and the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci (15521610).[43]
European mathematics

Isaac Newton in a 1702 portrait by Godfrey Kneller.

In 1342, Levi ben Gershon, known as Gersonides, wrote On Sines, Chords and Arcs, in particular proving the sine law for plane triangles and giving five-figure sine tables.[44] A simplified trigonometric table, the "toleta de marteloio", was used by sailors in the Mediterranean Sea during the 14th-15th C. to calculate navigation courses. It is described by Ramon Llull of Majorca in 1295, and laid out in the 1436 atlas of Venetian captain Andrea Bianco. Regiomontanus was perhaps the first mathematician in Europe to treat trigonometry as a distinct mathematical discipline,[45] in his De triangulis omnimodus written in 1464, as well as his later Tabulae directionum which included the tangent function, unnamed. The Opus palatinum de triangulis of Georg Joachim Rheticus, a student of Copernicus, was probably the first in Europe to define trigonometric functions directly in terms of right triangles instead of circles, with tables for all six trigonometric functions; this work was finished by Rheticus' student Valentin Otho in 1596. In the 17th century, Isaac Newton and James Stirling developed the general NewtonStirling interpolation formula for trigonometric functions. In the 18th century, Leonhard Euler's Introductio in analysin infinitorum (1748) was mostly responsible for establishing the analytic treatment of trigonometric functions in Europe, defining them as infinite series and presenting "Euler's formula" eix = cos x + i sin x. Euler used the near-modern abbreviations sin., cos., tang., cot.,

sec., and cosec. Prior to this, Roger Cotes had computed the derivative of sine in his Harmonia Mensurarum (1722).[46] Also in the 18th century, Brook Taylor defined the general Taylor series and gave the series expansions and approximations for all six trigonometric functions. The works of James Gregory in the 17th century and Colin Maclaurin in the 18th century were also very influential in the development of trigonometric series.

History of Trigonometry Outline

Trigonometry is, of course, a branch of geometry, but it differs from the synthetic geometry of Euclid and the ancient Greeks by being computational in nature. For instance, Proposition I.4 of the Elements is the angle-side-angle congruence theorem which states that a triangle is determined by any two angles and the side between them. That is, if you want to know the remaining angle and the remaining two sides, all you have to do is lay out the given side and the two angles at its ends, extend the other two sides until they meet, and you've got the triangle. No numerical computations involved.

But the trigonometrical version is different. If you have the measurements of the two angles and the length of the side between them, then the problem is to compute the remaining angle (which is easy, just subtract the sum of the two angles from two right angles) and the remaining two sides (which is difficult). The modern solution to the last computation is by means of the law of cosines. All trigonometrical computations require measurement of angles and computation of some trigonometrical function. The modern trigonometrical functions are sine, cosine, tangent, and their reciprocals, but in ancient Greek trigonometry, the chord, a more intuitive function, was used. Trigonometry, of course, depends on geometry. The law of cosines, for instance, follows from a proposition of synthetic geometry, namely propositions II.12 and II.13 of the Elements. And so, problems in trigonometry have required new developments in synthetic geometry. An example is Ptolemy's theorem which gives rules for the chords of the sum and difference of angles, which correspond to the sum and difference formulas for sines and cosines. The prime application of trigonometry in past cultures, not just ancient Greek, is to astronomy. Computation of angles in the celestial sphere requires a different kind of geometry and trigonometry than that in the plane. The geometry of the sphere was called "spherics" and formed one part of the quadrivium of study. Various authors, including Euclid, wrote books on spherics. The current name for the subject is "elliptic geometry." Trigonometry apparently arose to solve problems posed in spherics rather than problems posed in plane geometry. Thus, spherical trigonometry is as old as plane trigonometry.
The Babylonians and angle measurement The Babylonians, sometime before 300 B.C.E. were using degree measurement for angles. The Babylonian numerals were based on the number 60, so it may be conjectured that they took the unit measure to be what we call 60, then divided that into 60 degrees. Perhaps 60 was taken as the unit because the chord of 60 equals the radius of the circle, see below about chords. Degree measurement was later adopted by Hipparchus.

The Babylonians were the first to give coordinates for stars. They used the ecliptic as their base circle in the celestial sphere, that is, the crystal sphere of stars. The sun travels the ecliptic, the planets travel near the ecliptic, the constellations of the zodiac are arranged around the ecliptic, and the north star, Polaris, is 90 from the ecliptic. The celestial sphere rotates around the axis through the north and south poles. The Babylonians

measured the longitude in degrees counterclockwise from the vernal point as seen from the north pole, and they measured the latitude in degrees north or south from the ecliptic.
Hipparchus of Nicaea (ca. 180 - ca. 125 B.C.E.) Hipparchus was primarily an astronomer, but the beginnings of trigonometry apparently began with him. Certainly the Babylonians, Egyptians, and earlier Greeks knew much astronomy before Hipparchus, and they also determined the positions of many stars on the celestial sphere before him, but it is Hipparchus to whom the first table of chords is attributed. It has been hypothesized that Apollonius and even Archimedes constructed tables of chords before him, but there is no reference to any such earlier table.

Some of Hipparchus' advances in astronomy include the calculation of the mean lunar month, estimates of the sized and distances of the sun and moon, variants on the epicyclic and eccentric models of planetary motion, a catalog of 850 stars (longitude and latitude relative to the ecliptic), and the discovery of the precession of the equinoxes and a measurement of that precession. According to Theon, Hipparchus wrote a 12-book work on chords in a circle, since lost. That would be the first known work of trigonometry. Since the work no longer exists, most everything about it is speculation. But a few things are known from various mentions of it in other sources including another of his own. It included some lengths of chords corresponding to various arcs of circles, perhaps a table of chords. Besides these few scraps of information, others can be inferred from knowledge that was taken as well-known by his successors.

Chords as a basis of trigonometry In a modern presentation of trigonometry, the sine and cosine of an angle a are the yand x-coordinates of a point on the unit circle, the point being the intersection of the unit circle and one side of the angle a; the other side of the angle is the positive x-axis. The Greek, Indian, Arabic, and early Europeans used a circle of some other convenient radius. For this description of trigonometry, we'll leave the radius unspecified as r and it's double, the diameter, we'll denote d.

The chord of an angle AOB where O is the center of a circle and A and B are two points on the circle, is just the straight line AB. Chords are related to the modern sine and cosine by the formulas
crd a = d sin (a/2) crd (180 - a) = d cos (a/2)

sin a = (1/d) crd 2a

cos a = (1/d) crd (180 - 2a)

where a is an angle, d the diameter, and crd an abbreviation for chord. Some properties of chords could not have escaped Hipparchus' notice, especially in a 12-book work on the subject. For instance, a supplementaryangle formula would state that if AOB and BOC are supplementary angles, then Thales' theorem states that triangle ABC is right, so the Pythagorean theorem says the square on the chord AB plus the square on the chord BC

equals the square on the diameter AC. Summarized using a modern algebraic notation
crd2 AOB + crd2 BOC = d2

where d is the diameter of the circle. Hipparchus probably constructed his table of chords using a half-angle formula and the supplementary angle formula. The half-angle formula in terms of chords is
crd2(t/2) = r(2r - crd (180 - t)

where r is the radius of the circle and t is an angle. Starting with crd 60 = r, Hippocrates could by means of this half-angle formula find the chords of 30, 15, and 7 1/2. He could complete a table of chords in 7 1/2 steps by using crd 90, the half-angle formula, and the supplementary angle formula. What other relations among the chords of various angles that Hippocrates would have known remains speculation.
Menelaus (ca. 100 C.E.) The earliest work on spherical trigonometry was Menelaus' Spherica. It included what is now called Menelaus' theorem which relates arcs of great circles on spheres. Of course, Menelaus stated his result in terms of chords, but in terms of modern sines, his theorem reads sin CE = sin EA and sin CA = sin EA sin FD sin BE sin CD sin BF sin FD sin BA sin CF sin BD

He proved this result by first proving the plane version, then "projecting" back to the sphere. The plane version says
CE = EA and FD BA CF BD

CA = EA

CD BF

FD BE

Ptolemy (ca. 100 - 178 C.E.) Claudius Ptolemy's famous mathematical work was the Mathematike Syntaxis (Mathematical Collection) usually known as the Almagest. It is primarily a work on astronomy which included mathematical theory relevant to astronomy. It included trigonometric table, a table of chords for angles from 1/2 to 180 in increments of 1/2, the chords were rounded to two sexagesimal places, about five digits of accuracy. He also included the geometry necessary to construct the table. He computed the chord of 72, an central angle of a pentagon, a constructable angle. Along with the chord of 60 (the radius which Ptolemy took to be 60), that gives crd 12, then crd 6, crd 3, crd 1 1/2, and crd 3/4. He used interpolation to find crd 1 and crd 1/2&deg.

Ptolemy's Theorem Ptolemy proved the theorem that gives the sum and difference formulas for chords. Theorem. For a cyclic quadrilateral (that is, a quadrilateral inscribed in a circle), the product of the diagonals equals the sum of the products of the opposite sides. AC BD = AB CD + AD BC When AD is a diameter of the circle, then the theorem says crd AOC crd BOD = crd AOB crd COD + d crd BOC.

where O is the center of the circle and d the diameter. If we take a to be angle AOB and b to be angle AOC, then we have
crd b crd (180 - a) = crd a crd (180 - b) + d crd (b - a)

which gives the difference formula

crd b crd (180 - a) - crd a crd (180 - b) crd (b - a) = d

With a different interpretation of a and b, the sum formula results:

crd b crd (180 - a) + crd a crd (180 - b) crd (b + a) = d

These, of course, correspond to the sum and difference formulas for sines.

Armed with his theorem, Ptolemy could complete his table of chords from 1/2 to 180 in increments of 1/2.

Trigonometry Computational trigonometry could only begin after the construction of a good trig table, and so Ptolemy proceeded. Although he did not systematically give methods for solving right triangles and oblique triangles, solutions to specific problems are found in the Almagest. Those solutions that we would find using sines or cosines are equally easy to solve with a table of chords, but those that we would solve with tangents would require dividing a chord by the supplementary chord, making for a more difficult solution. A typical example of that would be finding the height of a pole given the length of its shadow and the angle of inclination of the shadow.

Trigonometry/A Brief History of Trigonometry

From Wikibooks, open books for an open world < Trigonometry Jump to: navigation, search

] A Brief History of Trigonometry

A painting of the famous greek geometrist, and "father of measurement", Euclid. In the times of the greeks, trigonometry and geometry were important mathematical principles used in building, agriculture and education.

The Babylonians could measure angles, and are believed to have invented the division of the cirle into 360.[1] However, it was the Greeks who are seen as the original pioneers of trigonometry. A Greek mathematician, Euclid, who lived around 300 BC was an important figure in geometry and trigonometry. He is most renowned for Euclid's Elements, a very careful study in proving more complex geometric properties from simpler principles. Although there is some doubt about the originality of the concepts contained within Elements, there is no doubt that his works have been hugely influential in how we think about proofs and geometry today; indeed, it has been said that the Elements have "exercised an influence upon the human mind greater than that of any other work except the Bible.<Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 2008>

[edit] First Tables of Sines or Cosines

Hiparchus

In the second century BC a Greek mathematician, Hipparchus, is thought to have been the first person to produce a table for solving a triangle's lengths and angles.[2]

The Pythagorean Theorem

Pythagoras, depicted on a 3rd-century coin In a right triangle: The square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. The Pythagorean theorem is named after the Greek mathematician Pythagoras, who by tradition is credited with its discovery and proof,[1][2] although it is often argued that knowledge of the theorem predates him. There is much evidence that Babylonian mathematicians understood the formula.[3]

Heron's Formula

Heron of Alexandria The area A of a triangle whose sides have lengths a, b, and c is

where is the semiperimeter of the triangle:

The formula is believed to be due to Hero (or Heron) of Alexandria (10 70 AD), a Greek mathematician. The formula has nothing to with heron's (the bird).
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trigonometry, the branch of mathematics concerned with specific functions of angles and their application to calculations. There are six functions of an angle commonly used in trigonometry. Their names and abbreviations are sine (sin), cosine (cos), tangent (tan), cotangent (cot), secant (sec), and cosecant (csc). These six trigonometric functions in relation to a right triangle are displayed in the figure. For example, the triangle contains an angle A, and the ratio of the side opposite to A and the side opposite to the right angle (the hypotenuse) is called the sine of A, or sin A; the other trigonometry functions are defined similarly. These functions are properties of the angle A independent of the size of the triangle, and calculated values were tabulated for many angles before computers made trigonometry tables obsolete. Trigonometric functions are used in obtaining unknown angles and distances from known or measured angles in geometric figures. Trigonometry developed from a need to compute angles and distances in such fields as astronomy, map making, surveying, and artillery range finding. Problems involving angles and distances in one plane are covered in plane trigonometry. Applications to similar problems in more than one plane of three-dimensional space are considered in spherical trigonometry.

History of trigonometry Table Of Contents

Classical trigonometry

The word trigonometry comes from the Greek words trigonon (triangle) and metron (to measure). Until about the 16th century, trigonometry was chiefly concerned with computing the numerical values of the missing parts of a triangle (or any shape that can be dissected into triangles) when the values of other parts were given. For example, if the lengths of two sides of a triangle and the measure of the enclosed angle are known, the third side and the two remaining angles can be calculated. Such calculations distinguish trigonometry from geometry,

which mainly investigates qualitative relations. Of course, this distinction is not always absolute: the Pythagorean theorem, for example, is a statement about the lengths of the three sides in a right triangle and is thus quantitative in nature. Still, in its original form, trigonometry was by and large an offspring of geometry; it was not until the 16th century that the two became separate branches of mathematics.
Ancient Egypt and the Mediterranean world

Several ancient civilizationsin particular, the Egyptian, Babylonian, Hindu, and Chinesepossessed a considerable knowledge of practical geometry, including some concepts that were a prelude to trigonometry. The Rhind papyrus, an Egyptian collection of 84 problems in arithmetic, algebra, and geometry dating from about 1800 bc, contains five problems dealing with the seked. A close analysis of the text, with its accompanying figures, reveals that this word means the slope of an inclineessential knowledge for huge construction projects such as the pyramids. For example, problem 56 asks: If a pyramid is 250 cubits high and the side of its base is 360 cubits long, what is its seked? The solution is given as 51/25 palms per cubit; and since one cubit equals 7 palms, this fraction is equivalent to the pure ratio 18/25. This is actually the run-to-rise ratio of the pyramid in questionin effect, the cotangent of the angle between the base and face (see the figure). It shows that the Egyptians had at least some knowledge of the numerical relations in a triangle, a kind of proto-trigonometry. Trigonometry in the modern sense began with the Greeks. Hipparchus (c. 190120 bc) was the first to construct a table of values for a trigonometric function. He considered every triangleplanar or sphericalas being inscribed in a circle, so that each side becomes a chord (that is, a straight line that connects two points on a

curve or surface, as shown by the inscribed triangle ABC in the figure). To compute the various parts of the triangle, one has to find the length of each chord as a function of the central angle that subtends itor, equivalently, the length of a chord as a function of the corresponding arc width. This became the chief task of trigonometry for the next several centuries. As an astronomer, Hipparchus was mainly interested in spherical triangles, such as the imaginary triangle formed by three stars on the celestial sphere, but he was also familiar with the basic formulas of plane trigonometry. In Hipparchuss time these formulas were expressed in purely geometric terms as relations between the various chords and the angles (or arcs) that

subtend them; the modern symbols for the trigonometric functions were not introduced until the 17th century.

(See the table of common trigonometry formulas.) The first major ancient work on trigonometry to reach Europe intact after the Dark Ages was the Almagest by Ptolemy (c. ad 100170). He lived in Alexandria, the intellectual centre of the Hellenistic world, but little else is known about him. Although Ptolemy wrote works on mathematics, geography, and optics, he is chiefly known for the Almagest, a 13-book compendium on astronomy that became the basis for mankinds world picture until the heliocentric system of Nicolaus Copernicus began to supplant Ptolemys geocentric system in the mid-16th century. In order to develop this world picturethe essence of which was a stationary Earth around which the Sun, Moon, and the five known planets move in circular orbitsPtolemy had to use some elementary trigonometry. Chapters 10 and 11 of the first book of the Almagest deal with the construction of a table of chords, in which the length of a chord in a circle is given as a function of the central angle that subtends it, for angles ranging from 0 to 180 at intervals of one-half degree. This is essentially a table of sines, which can be

seen by denoting the radius r, the arc A, and the length of the subtended chord c (see the

figure), to obtain c = 2r sin A/2. Because Ptolemy used the Babylonian sexagesimal numerals and numeral systems (base 60), he did his computations with a standard circle of radius r = 60 units, so that c = 120 sin A/2. Thus, apart from the proportionality factor 120, his was a table of values of sin A/2 and therefore (by doubling the arc) of sin A. With the help of his table Ptolemy improved on existing geodetic measures of the world and refined Hipparchus model of the motions of the heavenly bodies.
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History of Trigonometry - Part 3

Article | Teachers' Notes | Printable page |

Article by Leo Rogers Stage: 3, 4 and 5

This is the third of three articles on the History of Trigonometry. Part 2 (Sections 5 - 7) can be found here. Part 1 (Sections 1 - 4) can be found here.
8. The Arabs collect knowledge from the known world The Arab civilisation traditionally marks its beginning from the year 622 CE the date when Muhammad, threatened with assassination, fled from Mecca to Medina where Muhammad and his followers found safety and respect. Over a century later, the Arabs had established themselves as a powerful unified force across large parts of the Middle East and The Caliph Abu Ja'far Al-Mansour moved from Damascus to establish the city of Baghdad during the years 762 to 766. AlMansour sent his emissaries to search for and collect knowledge. From China, they learnt how to produce paper, and using this new skill they started a programme of translation of texts on mathematics, astronomy, science and philosophy into Arabic. This work was continued by his successors, Caliphs Mohammad Al-Mahdi and Haroun Al-Rasheed. The quest for knowledge became a lasting and significant part of Arab culture.

Al-Mansour had founded a scientific academy that became called 'The House of Wisdom'. This academy attracted scholars from many different countries and religions to Baghdad to work together and establish the traditions of Arabic science that were to continue well into the Middle Ages. Some of this work was later translated into Latin by Mediaeval scholars and passed on into Europe. The dominance of Baghdad and the influence of the Arab World was to last for the next 500 years.

The scholars in the House of Wisdom came from many cultures and translated the works of Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek, Indian and Chinese astronomers and mathematicians. The Mathematical Treatise of Ptolemy was one of the first to be translated from the Greek into Arabic by Ishaq ben Hunayn (830-910). It was admired for its extensive content and became known in Arabic as Al-Megiste (the Great Book). The name 'Almagest' has continued to this day and it is recognized as both the great synthesis and the culmination of mathematical astronomy of the ancient Greek world. It was translated into Arabic at least five times and constituted the basis of the mathematical astronomy carried out in the Islamic world. 9. India: The Sine, Cosine and Versine Greek astronomy began to be known in India during the period 300-400 CE. However, Indian astronomers had long been using planetary data and calculation methods from the Babylonians, and even though it was well after Ptolemy had written the Almagest, 4th century Indian astronomers did not entirely take over Greek planetary theory. Ancient works like the Panca-siddhantica (now lost) that had been transmitted through the version by Vrahamihira [See Part 1 section 3] and Aryabhata's Aryabhatiya (499 CE) demonstrated that Indian scholars had their own ways of dealing with astronomical problems and that they had great skill in calculation.[See Note 1 below]

Even in the oldest Indian texts, the Chord [to remind yourself about Chords see the section on Claudius Ptolemy in the previous article] is not used, and instead there appear some very early versions of trigonometric tables using Sines.

However, the Indian astronomers divided the 90^\circ arc into 24 sections, thus obtaining values of Sines for every 3^\circ45' of arc.

In this diagram, SB is the arc for the angle \theta and AS is the jiya. So the relation between the jiya and our sine is: jiya (\theta)=R\sin\theta where R is the radius of the circle.

Many Indian Sine tables use R = 3438 which is the result if the circumference of the circle is 360 \times 60 or 21,600 minutes. [See Note 2 below]

By the 5th century, two other functions had been defined and used. The length EA was called the kotijya (our cosine), and AB was called the utkrama-jya (our versine). This was sometimes called the sama meaning an 'arrow', or sagitta in Latin The versine function for a circle radius R is: \mbox{vers }\theta = R - \cos\theta [See Note 3 below]

In Aryabhata's work, he uses R = 3438 and took this value to calculate his table of Sines. This became the standard for later works. Comparison with Varhamihira's Sines (in sexagesimal numbers) and Hipparchs' table (in lengths of chords) suggests a possible transmission of at least some of the Greek works to the Hindus. However, we have no way of knowing this for certain, and it is quite possible that the Hindus calculated their values independently.

The 'Great Work' (the Mahabhaskariya) of Bhaskara I was written in about 600 CE. He produced a remarkable method for approximating values for the Sines, by using the ratio of two quadratic functions. This was based entirely on comparing the results of his calculations with earlier values. [See Note 4 below ]

However, since these tables only gave values for every 3^\circ 45', there was cnsiderable room for improvement. It is curious that since Ptolemy's table of chords enabled him to find values equivalent to Sines from \frac{1}{4}^\circ to 90^\circ that the Indian scholars did not go further at this stage. Later, Brahmagupta (598-670) produced an ingenious method based on second order differences to obtain the Sine of any angle from an initial set of only six values from 0^\circ in 15^\circ intervals to 90^\circ. 10. Trigonometry in the Arab Civilisation The introduction and development of trigonometry into an independent science in the Arab civilisation took, in all, some 400 years. In the early 770s Indian astronomical works reached the Caliph Al-Mansur in Baghdad, and were translated as the Zij al-Sindhind, and this introduced Indian calculation methods into Islam.

Famous for his algebra book, Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (see The Development of Algebra Part 1) had also written a book on Indian methods of calculation (al-hisab al-hindi) and he produced an improved version of the Zij al-Sindhind. Al-Khwarizmi's version of Zij used Sines and Versines, and developed procedures for tangents and cotangents to solve astronomical problems. Al-Khwarizmi's Zij was copied many times and versions of it were used for a long time.

Many works in Greek, Sanskrit, and Syriac were brought by scholars to Al-Mansur's House of Wisdom and translated. Among these were the works of Euclid, Archimedes Apollonius and of course, Ptolemy. The Arabs now had two competing versions of astronomy, and soon the Almagest prevailed.

The Indian use of the sine and its related functions were much easier to apply in calculations, and the sexagesimal system from the Babylonians continued to be used, so apart from these two changes, the early Arabic versions of the Almagest remained faithful to Ptolemy. [See Note 5 below] Abu al-Wafa al-Buzjani (Abul Wafa 940-998) made important contributions to both geometry and arithmetic and was the first to study trigonometric identities systematically. The study of identities was important because by establishing relationships between sums and differences, and fractions and multiples of angles, more efficient astronomical calculations could be conducted and more accurate tables could be established.

The sine, versine and cosine had been developed in the context of astronomical problems, whereas the tangent and cotangent were developed from the study of shadows of the gnomon. In his Almagest, Abul Wafa brought them together and established the relations between the six fundamental trigonometric functions for the first time. He also used R = 1 for the radius of the basic circle.

From these relations Abul Wafa was able to demonstrate a number of new identities using these new functions: sec^2\theta = 1 + tan^2\theta \mbox{. . . . . . . }cosec^2 \theta=1+cot^2 \theta

Abul Wafa also devised methods for calculating trigonometric tables by an improved differencing technique to obtain values that were accurate to 5 sexagesimal (8 decimal) places.

Greek astronomers had long since introduced a model of the universe with the stars on the inside of a vast sphere. They had also worked with spherical triangles, but Abul Wafa was the first Arab astronomer to develop ways of measuring the distance between stars using his new system of trigonometric functions including the versine.

In the diagram above, the blue triangle with sides a, b, and c represents the distances between stars on the inside of a sphere. The apex where the three angles \alpha, \beta, and \gamma are marked, is the position of the observer. The blue curves are Great Circles on the sphere, and by measuring the angles, finding more accurate values for their functions, and assuming a value for R the radius of the sphere, it became possible to find the great-circle distances between the stars.

By an ingenious application of Menelaos' Theorem [See History of Trigonometry Part 2] using special cases of great circles with two right angles, Abul Wafa showed how the theorem could be applied in spherical triangles. This was a

considerable advance in Spherical Trigonometry that enabled the calculation of the correct direction for prayer (the quibla) and was to have important applications in Navigation and Cartography. The Abul Wafa crater of the Moon is named in recognition of his work in astronomy.

Abu al-Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad Al-Biruni (973-1050) was an outstanding scholar reputed to have written over 100 treatises on astronomy, science, mathematics, geography, history, geodesy and philosophy. Only about twenty of these works now survive, and only about a dozen of these have been published.

Al-Biruni's treatise entitled Maqalid 'ilm al-hay'a (Keys to the Science of Astronomy) ran to over one thousand pages and contained extensive developments in on trigonometry. Among many theorems, he produced a demonstration of the tangent formula, shown below.

From the diagram, O is the centre of the semicircle, and AED a right-angled triangle with a perpendicular from E to C. Consequently, triangles AEC and EDC are similar. Angle EOD is twice angle EAD, and angles EAC and DEC are equal. If the radius of the circle R =1, then EC = \sin \theta and OC = \cos\theta \mbox{So }\tan\left(\frac{\theta}{2}\right)=\frac{EC}{AC}=\frac{\sin\theta}{1+\cos\theta} \mbox{ . . . and . . . } \tan\left(\frac{\theta}{2}\right)=\frac{DC}{EC}=\frac{1-\cos\theta}{\sin\theta}

From which he derived the half angle and multiple angle formulae. [See Note 6 below]

While many new aspects of trigonometry were being discovered, the chord, sine, versine and cosine were developed in the investigation of astronomical problems, and conceived of as properties of angles at the centre of the heavenly sphere. In contrast, tangent and cotangent properties were derived from the measurement of shadows of a gnomon and the problems of telling the time.

In his Demarcation of the Coordinates of Cities he used spherical triangles for finding the coordinates of cities and other places to establish local meridian (the quibla) and thereby finding the correct direction of Mecca, and in his Exhaustive Treatise on Shadows he showed how to use gnomons [See A Brief History of Time Measurement] for finding the time of day.

Abu Muhammad Jabir ibn Aflah (Jabir ibn Aflah c1100 - c1160) probably worked in Seville during the first part of the 12th century. His work is seen as significant in passing on knowledge to Europe. Jabir ibn Aflah was considered a vigorous critic of Ptolemy's astronomy. His treatise helped to spread trigonometry in Europe in the 13th century, and his theorems were used by the astronomers who compiled the influential Libro del Cuadrante Sennero (Book of the Sine Quadrant) under the patronage of King Alfonso X the Wise of Castille (1221-1284). A result of this project was the creation of much more accurate astronomical tables for calculating the position of the Sun, Moon and Planets, relative to the fixed stars, called the Alfonsine Tables made in Toledo somewhere between 1252 and 1270. These were the tables Columbus used to sail to the New World, and they remained the most accurate tables until the 16th century.

By the end of the 10th century trigonometry occupied an important place in astronomy texts with chapters on sines and chords, shadows (tangents and cotangents) and the formulae for spherical calculations. There was also considerable interest in the resolution of plane triangles. But a completely new type of work by Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (Al-Tusi 12011274) entitled Kashf al-qina 'an asrar shakl al-qatta (Treatise on the Secrets of the Sector Figure), was the first treatment of trigonometry in its own right, as a complete subject apart from Astronomy. The work contained a systematic discussion on the application of proportional reasoning to solving plane and spherical triangles, and a thorough treatment of the formulae for solving triangles and trigonometric identities. Al-Tusi originally wrote in Persian, but later wrote an Arabic version. The only surviving Persian version of his work is in the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

This was a collection and major improvement on earlier knowledge. Books I, II and IV contain parts of the Elements, the Almagest and a number of other Greek sources. Book III deals with the basic geometry for spherical triangles and the resolution of plane triangles using the sine theorem: \frac{a}{\sin A}=\frac{b}{\sin B}=\frac{c}{\sin C} Book V contains the principal chapters on trigonometry dealing with right-angled triangles and the six fundamental relations equivalent to those we use today; sine, cosine, tangent, cotangent, secant and cosecant. He provided many new proofs and showed how they could be used to solve many problems more easily.

Al-Tusi invented a new geometrical technique now called the 'Al-Tusi couple' that generated linear motion from the sum of two circular motions. He used this technique to replace the equant used by Ptolemy, and this device was later used by Copernicus in his heliocentric model of the universe.

Al-Tusi was one of the greatest scientists of Mediaeval Islam and responsible for some 150 works ranging from astronomy, mathematics and science to philosophy and poetry.

11. Arab Science and Technology Reaches Europe The Arab astronomers had learnt much from India, and there was contact with the Chinese along the Silk Road and through the sea routes, so that Arab trading posts were established in India and in China. Through these contacts Indian Buddhism spread into China and was well established by the 3rd century BCE, probably later carrying with it some of the calculation techniques of Indian astronomy. However few, if any, technological innovations seemed to have passed from China to India or Arabia.

By 790 CE, the Arab empire had reached its furthest expansion in Europe, conquering most of the Iberian peninsula, an area called Al-Andalus by the Arabs. [See Note 7 below]

At this time many religions and races coexisted in Iberia, each contributing to the culture. The Muslim religion was generally very tolerant towards others, and literacy in Islamic Iberia was more widespread than any other country in

Western Europe. By the 10th century Cordoba was said to have equally good libraries and educational establishments as Baghdad, and the cities of Cordoba and Toledo became centres of a flourishing translation business.

Between 1095 and 1291 a series of religiously inspired military Crusades were waged by the Christians of Europe against the Arab Empire. The principal reason was the restoration of Christian control over the Holy Land, but there were also many other political and economic reasons. [See Note 8 below]

In all this turmoil and conflict there were periods of calm and centres of stability, where scholars of all cultures were able to meet and knowledge was developed, translated and transmitted into Western Europe. The three principal routes through which Greek and Arab science became known were Constantinople (now Istanbul) Sicily and Spain. Greek texts became known to European monks and scholars who travelled with the armies through Constantinople on their way South to the Holy Land. These people learnt Greek and were able to translate the classical works into Latin. From Sicily, Arabs traded with Italy, and translation took place there, but probably the major route by which Arabic science reached Europe was from the translation houses of Toledo and Cordoba, across the Pyrenees into south-western France.

During the twelfth and thirteenth century hundreds of works from Arabic, Greek and Hebrew sources were translated into Latin and the new knowledge was gradually disseminated across Christian Europe.

Geometrical knowledge in early Mediaeval Europe was a very practical subject. It dealt with areas, heights, volumes and calculations with fractions for measuring fields and the building of large manors, churches, castles and cathedrals.

Hugh of St. Victor (1078-1141) in his Practica Geometriae divides the material into Theorica (what is known and practised by a teacher) and Practica (what is done by a builder or mason). Theoretical geometry in the Euclidean sense was virtually unknown until the first translations of Euclid appeared in the West.

The astrolabe was commonly used to measure heights by using its 'medicline' (a sighting instrument fixed at the centre of the circle) and the shadow square engraved in the centre of the instrument, and then comparing the similar triangles. The horizontal distance from the centre of the astrolabe to the edge of the square was marked with twelve equal divisions.

This system was in use well into the 16th century as seen in the illustration below:

This is from Thomas Digges' Pantometria of 1571. The same system is still used, but the square in the quadrant is marked with six divisions.

A popular twelfth century text, the Artis Cuiuslibet Consummatio shows the gradual insertion of more technical knowledge, where the measuring of heights (altimetry) was much more related to astronomy, showing how to construct gnomons and shadow squares. Gradually the translations made on the continent of Europe came to England.

Richard of Wallingford (1292-1336)

After entering Oxford University in about 1308, Richard entered monastic life at St Alban's in 1316. After his ordination as a priest, his Abbot sent him back to Oxford where he studied for nine years. In 1327 he became Abbot of St Albans.

Richard's early work was a series of instructions (canons) for the use of astronomical tables that had been drawn up by John Maudith, the Merton College Astronomer. Later he wrote an important work, the Quadripartitum, on the fundamentals of trigonometry needed for the solution of problems of spherical astronomy. The first part of this work is a theory of trigonometrical identities, and was regarded as a basis for the calculation of sines, cosines, chords and versed sines. The next two parts of the Quadripartitum dealt with a systematic and rigorous exposition of Menelaos' theorem. The work ends with an application of these principles to astronomy. The main sources of the work appear to be Ptolemy's Almagest, and Thabit ibn Qurra (826-901 CE).

The Quadripartitum was probably the first comprehensive mediaeval treatise on trigonometry to have been written in Europe, at least outside Spain and Islam. When Richard was abbot of St. Albans, he revised the work, taking into account the Flores of Jabir ibn Afla.

In 1326 to 1327 Richard also designed a calculation device, called an equatorium, a complex geared astrolabe with four faces. He described how this could be used to calculate lunar, solar and planetary longitudes and thereby predict eclipses in his Tractatus Albionis. It is possible that this led to his design for an astronomical clock described in his Tractatus Horologii Asronomici, (Treatise on the Astronomical Clock) of 1327, which was the most complex clock mechanism known at the time. The mechanism comprised a rotating star map that modeled the lunar eclipse and planets by gearing, presented as a geocentric model. It appeared at a transitional period in clock design, just before the advent of the escapement. This makes it one of the first true clocks, and certainly one of first self powered models of the heavens. Unfortunately it was destroyed during Henry VIII's reformation at the dissolution of St Albans Monastery in 1539.

Georg von Peuerbach (1423-1461) Peuerbach's work helped to pave the way for the Copernican conception of the world system; he created a new theory of the planets, made better calculations for eclipses and movements of the planets and introduced the use of the sine into his trigonometry.

His early work, Tabulae Eclipsium circulated in manuscript was not published until 1514, contained tables of his eclipse calculations that were based on the Alfonsine Tables. He calculated sines for every minute of arc for a radius of 600,000 units and he introduced the Hindu-Arabic numerals in his tables. [See Note 9 below]

Peuerbach's Theoricae Novae Planetarum, (New Theories of the Planets) was composed about 1454 was published in 1473 by Regiomontanus' printing press in Nuremburg. While the book was involved in attempting a technical resolution of the theories of Eudoxus and Ptolemy, Peuerbach claimed that the movement of the planets was determined by the Sun, and this has been seen as a step towards the Copernican theory. This book was read by Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler and became the standard astronomical text well into the seventeenth century.

In 1460 he began working on a new translation of Ptolemy's Almagest, but he had only completed six of the projected thirteen books before died in 1461.

Johannes Muller von Konigsberg or Regiomontanus (1436-1476)

Regiomontanus had become a pupil of Peuerbach at the University of Vienna in 1450. Later, he undertook with Peuerbach to correct the errors found in the Alfonsine Tables. He had a printing press where he produced tables of sines and tangents and continued Puerbach's innovation of using HinduArabic numerals.

As promised, he finished Peuerbach's Epitome of the Almagest, which he completed in 1462 and was printed in Venice. The Epitome was not just a translation, it added new observations, revised calculations and made critical comments about Ptolemy's work.

Realising that there was a need for a systematic account of trigonometry, Regiomontanus began his major work, the De Triangulis Omnimodis (Concerning Triangles of Every Kind) 1464. In his preface to the Reader he says,

"For no one can bypass the science of triangles and reach a satisfying knowledge of the stars .... You, who wish to study great and wonderful things, who wonder about the movement of the stars, must read these theorems about triangles. Knowing these ideas will open the door to all of astronomy and to certain geometric problems. For although certain figures must be transformed into triangles to be solved, the remaining questions of astronomy require these books." [See Note 10 below]

The first book gives the basic definitions of quantity, ratio, equality, circles, arcs, chords and the sine function. Next come a list of axioms he will assume, and then 33 theorems for right, isosceles and scalene triangles. The formula for the area of a triangle is given followed by the sine rule giving examples of its application. Books III to V cover the all-important theory of spherical trigonometry. The whole book is organised in the style of Euclid with propositions and theorems set out in a logical hierarchical manner. This work, published in 1533 was of great value to Copernicus. Regiomontanus also built the first astronomical observatory in Germany at Nuremburg with a workshop where he built astronomical instruments. He also took observations on a comet in 1472 that were accurate enough to allow it to be identified as Halley's Comet that reappeared 210 years later. Regiomontanus died during an outbreak of plague in Rome in 1476.
12. The Final Chapter: Trigonometry Changes the World System Nicolaus Copernicus (1473 - 1543)

Copernicus wrote a brief outline of his proposed system called the Commentariolus that he circulated to friends somewhere between 1510 and 1514. By this time he had used observations of the planet Mercury and the Alfonsine Tables to convince himself that he could explain the motion of the Earth as one of the planets. The manuscript of Copernicus' work has survived and it is thought that by the 1530s most of his work had been completed, but he delayed publishing the book.

His student, Rheticus read the manuscript and made a summary of Copernicus' theory and published it as the Narratio Prima (the First Account) in 1540. Since it seemed that the Narratio had been well accepted by colleagues, Copernicus was persuaded to publish more of his main work, and in 1542 he published a section on his spherical trigonometry as De lateribus et angulis traingulorum (On the sides and angles of triangles). Further persuaded by Rheticus and others, he finally agreed to publish the whole work, De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (The Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) and dedicated it to Pope Paul III. It appeared just before Copernicus' death in 1543. [See Note 11 below]

Georg Joachim von Lauchen called Rheticus (1514-1574) Rheticus had facilitated the publication of Copernicus' work, and had clearly understood the basic principles of the new planetary theory.

In 1551, with the help of six assistants, Rheticus recalculated and produced the Opus Palatinum de Triangulis (Canon of the Science of Triangles) which became the first publication of tables of all six trigonometric functions. This was intended to be an introduction to his greatest work, The Science of Triangles.

When he died his work was still unfinished, but like Copernicus, Rheticus acquired a student, Valentinus Otho who supervised the calculation (by hand) of some one hundred thousand ratios to at least ten decimal places filling some 1,500 pages. This was finally completed in 1596. These tables were accurate enough to be used as the basis for astronomical calculations up to the early 20th century. Bartholomaeus Pitiscus (1561 - 1613)

The term trigonometry is due to Pitiscus and as first appeared in his Trigonometria: sive de solutione triangulorum tractatus brevis et perspicuus, published in 1595. A revised version in1600 was the Canon triangularum sive tabulae sinuum, tangentium et secantium ad partes radii 100000 (A Canon of triangles, or tables of sines tangents and secants with a radius of 100,000 parts.) The book shows how to construct sine and other tables, and presents a number of theorems on plane and spherical trigonometry with their proofs. [See Note 11 below]

However, soon after Rheticus' Opus Palatinum was published, serious inaccuracies were found in the tangent and secant tables at the ends near 1^\circ and 90^\circ. Pitiscus was commissioned to correct these errors and obtained a manuscript copy of Rheticus' work. Many of the results were recalculated and new pages were printed incorporating the corrections. Eventually, Pitiscus published a new work in 1613 incorporating that of Rheticus with a table of sines calculated to fifteen decimal places entitled the Thesaurus Mathematicus.

By the beginning of the seventeenth century, the science of trigonometry had become a sophisticated technique used in calculating more and more accurate tables for use in astronomy and navigation, and had been instrumental in fundamentally changing man's concept of his world.
References Aveni, A, (1997) Stairways to the Stars. N.Y and Chichester Wiley Skywatching in three ancient cultures: Megalithic Astronomy, the Maya and the Inca. The first chapter (almost a third of the book) gives a delightful and straightforward explanation of how much we can discover with the naked eye. With clear diagrams and explanations this give a fascinating insight into the less well-known aspects of these ancient cultures.

Van Brummelen, G. (2009) The Mathematics of the Heavens and the Earth: The Early History of Trigonometry. Princeton, Princeton University Press. This is the first major history in English of the early development of trigonometry. Glen van Brummelen's extensive research shows how the earliest activities in Egypt and Babylon led to the mathematical work of the Hindus and the Greeks that was developed by the Arabs over some 400 years into a sophisticated science separate from astronomy before it was passed on to Western European astronomers and mathematicians.

Evans, J. (1998) The History and Practice of Ancient Astronomy. Oxford.O.U.P. Beginning from about 700 BCE this book examines in detail both the practical and theoretical astronomy developed by the Egyptians, Babylonians and Greeks, up to the 16th century with the final resolution of the planetary system with Copernicus and Kepler.

Hughes, B. (1967) Regiomontanus on Triangles. London, University of Wisconsin Press This is a translation with an introduction and notes, of the work completed in 1464, but published posthumously in 1533 of De triangulis omnimodis (On triangles of every kind) by Johan Muller, known as Regiomontanus. In this first edition, reproductions of the original Latin pages face the English translations. The book was written principally as a contribution to the science of astronomy, but we now recognise Regiomontanus as the first European scholar who treated trigonometry as a theoretical science, setting out a series of logical propositions and proofs in the style of Euclid.

Maor E. (1998) Trigonometric Delights. Princeton, Princeton University Press. Eli Maor presents a selection of the main elements of trigonometry and an account of its vital contribution to astronomy, science and social development. Interesting mathematical episodes to suit pupils at all levels, with notes and references for further exploration.

Rashed, R. (1996) (Ed.) Encyclopaedia of the History of Arabic Science. Vol 2.