Maligned, Misunderstood, But Brilliantly Mathematical — That’s Why You Must Study Brahmagupta | Ideas - Swarajya

Take a closer look at this article by R Gopu, delivers lectures on astronomy, history, sculpture, Sanskrit, and Tamil, and is part of the Tamil Heritage Trust. He blogs here.

Snapshot If there is one severely neglected, least translated, often maligned, and barely known mathematician, or perhaps, mathematician, in Indian history, it must be Brahmagupta.

Photo: Brahmagupta

India’s greatest Mathematician by 
If there were a contest for who was India’s greatest mathematician, who would win? But first, who would be the candidates? Srinivasa Ramanujan? Aryabhata? How about Bhaskaracharya? Why not reach far back into Vedic times? Do Baudhayana or Apastamaba qualify? Should it be a public opinion poll? Does one have to be a great mathematician himself to judge?

Did any Indian jyotisha ever raise this question? Yes! Bhaskara, the 12th century mathematician famous for Lilavati and Siddhanta Shironmani, himself considered the greatest by some mathematicians, gave such a title – Ganaka Chakra Chudamani. Not to Aryabhata or Baudhayana, but to Brahmagupta.

Brahmagupta, who? What did he do? When and where did he live? Does he have an ISRO satellite named after him? Or even a bus stand?...

Brahmagupta’s Innovations
But his innovations in mathematics are what evoked Bhaskara’s admiration. Brahmagupta gave us the mathematics of zero, its addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. He explained negative numbers (which were written with a dot over them) and their properties. God may have created integers; Brahmagupta explained them...

Historical perspective
Indian mathematicians were using irrational square roots for a thousand years and sines and cosines for several centuries before discovering negative numbers. The inspiration for negative numbers comes from commerce and the notion of debt, not any religious philosophy.
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Source: Swarajya