The move from zero as merely a placeholder by the Mayans and Babylonians – a tool to distinguish larger numbers from smaller ones to a digit of its own was established in India by a man named
From India, the zero made its way to China and back to the Middle East, where it was taken up by the mathematician Mohammed ibn-Musa al-Khowarizmi around 773. He studied and synthesized Indian arithmetic and showed how zero functioned in the system of formulas he called 'al-jabr'—today known as algebra.
What is widely found in textbooks in India is that a mathematician and astronomer, Aryabhata, in the 5th century used zero as a placeholder and in algorithms for finding square roots and cube roots in his Sanskrit treatises.
Despite the many amazing accomplishments listed already, Brahmagupta is best remembered for his work defining the number zero. Zero had already been invented in Brahmagupta's time, used as a placeholder for a base-10 number system by the Babylonians and as a symbol for a lack of quantity by the Romans.
The Indians also used a place-value system and zero was used to denote an empty place. In fact there is evidence of an empty place holder in positional numbers from as early as 200AD in India but some historians dismiss these as later forgeries.
The first recorded zero appeared in Mesopotamia around 3 B.C. The Mayans invented it independently circa 4 A.D. It was later devised in India in the mid-fifth century, spread to Cambodia near the end of the seventh century, and into China and the Islamic countries at the end of the eighth.
In the Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta, or “Correctly Established Doctrine of Brahma,” the Indian mathematician and astronomer Brahmagupta wrote, “The sum of two positive numbers is positive, that of two negative numbers is negative...the sum of two equals, opposite in sign, is zero.”
'Zero' is believed to have been invented by Aryabhata. Aryabhatta, one of the world's greatest mathematician-astronomer, was born in Patliputra in Magadha, modern Patna in Bihar. He wrote his famous treatise the "Aryabhatta-Siddhanta".
Hindu-Arabic numerals, set of 10 symbols—1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0—that represent numbers in the decimal number system. They originated in India in the 6th or 7th century and were introduced to Europe through the writings of Middle Eastern mathematicians, especially al-Khwarizmi and al-Kindi, about the 12th century.
Infinity is a mathematical concept originating from Zeno of Elia (~450 BC) who tried to show its “physical” impossibility. This resulted in the “arrow paradox”, but which was solved later on. Many mathematicians and physicists went on to try understanding infinity and to explain it by various theories and experiments.
Therefore, on the basis of the earliest contribution, the father of mathematics is Pythagoras.
Circle Method: Ramanujan, along with GH Hardy, invented the circle method which gave the first approximations of the partition of numbers beyond 200. This method contributed significantly to solving the notorious complex problems of the 20th century, such as Waring's conjecture and other additional questions.
Although zero wasn't discovered until the 5th century, its applications can be dated back to as early as the Sumerians and Brahmagupta's era. While the Sumerians used a tally stick to denote the word zero, the Brahmaguptas utilised tick marks in clay and tied knots on a rope to represent the same.
"Zero and its operation are first defined by [Hindu astronomer and mathematician] Brahmagupta in 628," said Gobets. He developed a symbol for zero: a dot underneath numbers.
The first recorded use of the word zero in the English language was in 1598. However, the concept is ancient, perhaps first captured by the Sanskrit word śūnya. In ancient Egypt, the word for zero was nefer, a word whose hieroglyphic symbol is a heart with trachea.
About 1,500 years ago in India a symbol was used to represent an abacus column with nothing in it. At first this was just a dot; later it became the '0' we know today. In the 8th century the great Arab mathematician, al-Khwarizmi, took it up and the Arabs eventually brought the zero to Europe.
What is the oldest number system? The oldest number system in the world is the Babylonian number system.
Origins. The Hindu–Arabic or Indo–Arabic numerals were invented by mathematicians in India. Persian and Arabic mathematicians called them "Hindu numerals". Later they came to be called "Arabic numerals" in Europe because they were introduced to the West by Arab merchants.
The Chinese were the first people to use a decimal place value numeral system. They were also the first to employ a system of decimal fractions.
In 1299, zero was banned in Florence, along with all Arabic numerals, because they were said to encourage fraud.
Having no zero would unleash utter chaos in the world. Maths would be different ball game altogether, with no fractions, no algebra and no calculus. A number line would go from -1 to 1 with nothing bridging the gap. Zero as a placeholder has lots of value and without it a billion would simply be “1”.
Mathematics. 0 is the integer immediately preceding 1.
About 773 AD the mathematician Mohammed ibn-Musa al-Khowarizmi was the first to work on equations that were equal to zero (now known as algebra), though he called it 'sifr'. By the ninth century the zero was part of the Arabic numeral system in a similar shape to the present day oval we now use.
Hindu astronomers and mathematicians Aryabhata, born in 476, and Brahmagupta, born in 598, are both popularly believed to have been the first to formally describe the modern decimal place value system and present rules governing the use of the zero symbol.
śūnya, in the context of buddha dharma, primarily means "empty", or "void," but also means "zero," and "nothing," and derives from the root śvi, meaning "hollow"