Nicolas Chuquet

Nicolas Chuquet (* between 1445 and 1455 in Paris , † 1487 or 1488 in Lyon ) was a French mathematician .

Life

Chuquet claims to have come from Paris, where he obtained a bachelor's degree in medicine. From around 1480 he appears in the tax lists of Lyon and is described there as an algorist (arithmetic master). He also worked as a copyist and scribe. Otherwise little is known about him. References to Italian sources in his works could point to a stay in Italy, but there were also many Italian merchants in Lyon.

His main work Triparty en la science des nombres remained unpublished during his lifetime. It is the earliest French work on algebra . Estienne de La Roches L'arismetique from 1520 was the first algebra book until the 19th century . In 1841 Michel Chasles made it clear that La Roche's work was largely a copy of Nicolas Chuquet's book. In the 1870s, the scholar Aristide Marre discovered Nicolas Chuquet's manuscript and published it in 1880. The manuscript also includes de La Roche's comments.

plant

Excerpt from the manuscript of the Triparty en la science des nombres with the description of large numbers

Nicolas Chuquet invented his own notation for algebraic terms and exponentiation . It is very likely that he was the first mathematician to recognize zero and negative numbers as possible exponents.

The long scale (French échelle longue ) to denote large numbers goes back to Nicolas Chuquet . He divided them into groups of 6 digits each and gave them a series of names: the first 6 digits the name Million , the second group of six the name Billion , followed by Trillion and Quadrillion . In contrast to the modern name, the intermediate levels are not called a billion , but a thousand million.

He clearly worked out the arithmetic laws for powers and in an arrangement of the comparison of an arithmetic and geometrical sequence . Something similar can be found later in Michael Stifel and other authors of the 16th century, and this reduction from multiplication to addition, along with trigonometric addition formulas, is at the beginning of the development of logarithms . ${\ displaystyle a ^ {n} a ^ {m} = a ^ {n + m}}$ ${\ displaystyle (a ^ {n}) ^ {m} = a ^ {n \ cdot m}}$

Furthermore, the rule of the middle numbers is assigned to him .

literature

Aristide Marre, Bulletino di Bibliogr. e de Storia delle science mat. et fisiche, Volume 13, 1880, pp. 555–569, Volume 14, pp. 413–460 (publication of the original manuscript by Chuquet from the Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris)
Graham Flegg, Cynthia Hay, Barbara Moss (editors) Nicolas Chuquet, Renaissance Mathematician , Reidel 1985
Jean Itard in Dictionary of Scientific Biography
Cynthia Hay (Editor) Mathematics from Manuscript to Print 1300-1600 , Oxford 1988
Florian Cajori A history of mathematical notation , Open Court Publ. 1928/29, Dover 1993

Web links

John J. O'Connor, Edmund F. Robertson : Nicolas Chuquet. In: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .
Spektrum.de: Nicolas Chuquet (1445–1488) April 1, 2015

Individual evidence

↑ e.g. C. Knott (Ed.) Napier Tercentenary Volume , 1915, pp. 83f
↑ Kathleen Clark, Clemency Montelle Logarithms. The early history of a familiar function , MAA

personal data
SURNAME	Chuquet, Nicolas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	French mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH	between 1445 and 1455
PLACE OF BIRTH	Paris
DATE OF DEATH	1487 or 1488
Place of death	Lyon

[1] .g. C. Knott (Ed.) Napier Tercentenary Volume , 1915, pp. 83f

[2] Kathleen Clark, Clemency Montelle Logarithms. The early history of a familiar function , MAA