Diophantus of

Alexandria
By: Alexandria Howell
Class: History of Mathematics 332

Diophantus
Diophantus lived in Alexandria, Egypt, between 200-284 A.D
died at the age 84.
Diophantus was called the father of algebra, known for
Alexandrian Greek Mathematician, and the author of series of
books called Arithmetica, many of which are now lost.
These texts deal with solving algebraic equations, and on theory
of numbers.
Diophantus wrote several other books besides Arthmetica, but
very few survived.

Puzzle
The most details of Diophantuss life came from Greek
Anthology, complied by Metrodorus around 500 AD. This
puzzle contains one about Diophantus which say.(next
slide).
the puzzle implies
X= x/6 + x/12 + x/7 + 5 + x/2 +4
Diophantus also dealt with [Egyptian arithmetic] more
accurately.

Diophantus
Here lies Diophantus, the wonder behold
Through are algebraic, the stone tells how old:
God gave him his boyhood one-sixth of his life,
One twelfth more as youth while whiskers grew rife;
And then yet one-seventh are marriage ere marriage
begun;
In five years there came a bouncing new son.
Alas, the dear child of master and sage
After attaining half measure of his fathers life chill fate
took him. After consoling his fate by the science of
numbers for four years, he ended his life.
Was married at the age 33, birth of his son was at 38, and
the death of his son was at 42 four years before his own.

Diophantus
Diophantus work is divided up into 13 books. Six of the
books were known in Europe on the late 15 century,
transmitted in Greek Byzantine scholars and numbered
from I to VI; four other books were discovered in 1968
on the 9th century Arabic translation by Quasta ibn
Luqa. However, the Arabic text lacks mathematical
symbolism, and it appears to be based on a later Greek
commentary- perhaps that of Hypatia (370-415) that
diluted Diophantuss exposition.

Diophantus/Arithmetica
Diophantus explains his symbolism he uses symbols for the unknown
(corresponding to our x) and its powers, positive or negative, as well as for some
arithmetic operations- most of these symbols are clearly scribal abbreviations.
After teaching multiplication of the powers of the unknown, Diophantus explains
the multiplication of positive and negative terms and then how to reduce an
equation to one out of the way.
Although Diophantus made important advances in symbolism, he still lacked the
necessary notation to express more general methods. Some of the limitations of
Diophantus notation for one unknown and when problems involved more than a
single unknown Diophantus was reduced to expressing in words. He also lacked a
symbol for a general number n. Ex: 12+6n(divide)/n 2 3.

Arithmetica
The major work of Diophantus, and the most
work on Algebra in Greek mathematics.
It is a collection of problems giving
numerical solutions of both determine and
indeterminate equations.
Only positive rational solutions, negative or
irrational square roots.
Diophantus looked at all three types of
quadratic equations ax 2+bx=c, ax2=bx+c,
ax2+c=bx . The reason why is because he
did not have any notation for zero and he
avoided negative coefficients by considering
the given numbers a,b,c to all positive in
each of the three cases above.

Relevance of/to mathematics today

Diophantuss work has an large influence in history. His
work today shows why he is the father of algebra. The
first person known to use algebraic notation and
symbolism. Before him everyone wrote out equations
completely, even though algebra still had a long way to go
before very general problems could be written down and
solved.
Today in classroom Diophantine equation involves only
sums, products, and powers in which all the constants are
integers, and the only solutions of interest are integers.

Reference
www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diophantus
www.britannica.com/biography/Diophantus
www-history.mcs.stand.ac.uk/biographies/Diopahntus.html
www.Britannica.com/topic/Diophantine-equation.

The End