The first evidence we have of zero is from the Sumerian culture in Mesopotamia, some 5,000 years ago.
It was al-Khowarizmi who first synthesized Indian arithmetic and showed how the zero could function in algebraic equations, and by the ninth century the zero had entered the Arabic numeral system in a form resembling the oval shape we use today.
History of Math and Zero in India
The first modern equivalent of the numeral zero comes from a Hindu astronomer and mathematician Brahmagupta in 628. His symbol to depict the numeral was a dot underneath a number.
Aryabhatta, the famous Indian mathematician discovered 'zero'. Grutsamad discovered the process of writing zeroes after figures. Maharshi Charak and Vagbhatta were medical experts in ancient India.
Brahmagupta, the Indian mathematician and astronomer, first defined the number zero and its operations and developed a symbol for it.
In ancient Egypt, the word for zero was nefer, a word whose hieroglyphic symbol is a heart with trachea. Nefer could mean “beautiful, pleasant, and good.” But it was also used to represent the base level from which temples and other buildings arose. It is from that meaning that our current concept of zero evolved.
Moreover, If zero hadn't been discovered, we would have no algebra, no decimal system, no arithmetic, and most importantly — no computers! Even so, the significance of zero is seldom appreciated by us.
'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".
"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.
680) (commonly called Bhāskara I to avoid confusion with the 12th-century mathematician Bhāskara II) was a 7th-century Indian mathematician and astronomer who was the first to write numbers in the Hindu–Arabic decimal system with a circle for the zero, and who gave a unique and remarkable rational approximation of the ...
There is strong evidence that zero is an Eastern development that came to the West from India or a civilization with roots in India, such as Cambodia. This would mean that zero is not a Greek or Western invention, as scholars had long thought.
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.
Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920), the man who reshaped twentieth-century mathematics with his various contributions in several mathematical domains, including mathematical analysis, infinite series, continued fractions, number theory, and game theory is recognized as one of history's greatest mathematicians.
The first known English use of zero was in 1598. The Italian mathematician Fibonacci (c. 1170–1250), who grew up in North Africa and is credited with introducing the decimal system to Europe, used the term zephyrum. This became zefiro in Italian, and was then contracted to zero in Venetian.
So, the conclusion is the zero was invented later than number system. The number system was existed much before and zero was not part of number system then.
In around 500AD Aryabhata devised a number system which has no zero yet was a positional system. He used the word "kha" for position and it would be used later as the name for zero. There is evidence that a dot had been used in earlier Indian manuscripts to denote an empty place in positional notation.
The ancient Greeks and Egyptians had no zero. They used completely different symbols for 9, 90, 900 and so on. This system has a couple of big disadvantages. First, it only has symbols for numbers people have already thought of.
The number 9 is revered in Hinduism and considered a complete, perfected and divine number because it represents the end of a cycle in the decimal system, which originated from the Indian subcontinent as early as 3000 BC.
The invention of zero immensely simplified computations, freeing mathematicians to develop vital mathematical disciplines such as algebra and calculus, and eventually the basis for computers.
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.
Therefore, on the basis of the earliest contribution, the father of mathematics is Pythagoras.
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”.
The negative of 0 does not exist.