Information AboutDiophantus |
|
Diophantus of Alexandria (/ 214 – circa 284 / 298 ) was a Hellenistic Mathematician . Little is known of his life except that he lived in Alexandria , Egypt and worked in the Greek and Babylonian traditions of mathematics. Some scholars have claimed he was a Hellenized Babylonian ; however, his ethnic and religious origins are still open to speculation. He was known for his study of Equation s with Variable s which take on Rational Value s and these Diophantine Equations are named after him. Diophantus is sometimes known as the "father of Algebra " perhaps because his unusual syncopated notation seems reminiscient of the fully symbolic algebra that would develop much later. His most famous work is the '' Arithmetica '' — originally thirteen Greek books, of which only six survive today in extant Greek manuscripts. Some Diophantine problems from these books have been found in Arabic sources. An additional four books of the ''Arithmetica'', apparently from the lost Greek books, have been discovered in an Arabic manuscript in 1968. Diophantus also wrote a treatise on Polygonal Number s, of which part survives. The '' Editio Princeps '' of Diophantus was published in 1575 by Xylander , and editions of ''Arithmetica'' exerted a profound influence on the development of algebra in Europe in the late sixteenth and through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. .]] In '') to Diophantus on the same problem (II.8), the Byzantine mathematician Maximus Planudes had written "Thy soul, Diophantus, be with Satan because of the difficulty of your other theorems, and of this one in particular". Little is known about life of Diophantus. Some biographical information can be computed from a 5th and 6th century math puzzle involving Diophantus' age and styled as his epitaph (see links below). "This tomb holds Diophantus. Ah, what a marvel! And the tomb tells scientifically the measure of his life. God vouchsafed that he should be a boy for the sixth part of his life; when a twelfth was added, his cheeks acquired a beard; He kindled for him the light of marriage after a seventh, and in the fifth year after his marriage He granted him a son. Alas! late-begotten and miserable child, when he had reached the measure of half his father's life, the chill grave took him. After consoling his grief by this science of numbers for four years, he reached the end of his life." The answer can be obtained by letting ''x'' be the length of Diophantus' life and solving the equation: : which yields: : and so ''x'' = 84. So he married at the age of 26 and at age 31 had a son who died at the age of 42, four years before Diophantus himself died aged 84. Based on this information we have given him a life span of 84 years. External links
Sources
|