Aryabhata

Aryabhata the Elder

Born: 476 in Kusumapura, India
Died: 550 in India

Aryabhata wrote Aryabhatiya, finished in 499, which is a summary of Hindu mathematics up to that time, written in verse. It gives formulas for the areas of a triangle and a circle which are correct, but the formulas for the volumes of a sphere and a pyramid are wrong.

Aryabhatiya also contains continued fractions, quadratic equa= tions, sums of power series and a table of sines. Aryabhata gave an accurat= e approximation for 3D and = was one of the first known to use algebra. He also taught that the apparent= rotation of the heavens was due to the axial rotation of the Earth.

References elsewhere in this archive:

Tell me about Aryabhata's contribution to trigonometry

References:

  1. Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  2. Biography in Encyclopaedia Britannica
  3. B Datta, Two Aryabhatas of al-Biruni, Bull. Calcutta Math. Soc= =2E 17 (1926), 59-74.
  4. H-J Ilgauds, Aryabhata I, in H Wussing and W Arnold, Biographi= en bedeutender Mathematiker (Berlin, 1983). = 
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JOC/EFR February 1996