(1170 – 1250)

As Europe dawdled from Dark to the Middle Ages, Asia produced the best math centers, the most advanced syllabuses, and the greatest mathematicians. Leonardo Bigollo Pisano (popularly known as Fibonacci) was the most promising European mathematician of the Middle Ages. In order to make-up for Europe’s deficiencies, he imported several publications from Arabia. The fact that his father was a wealthy merchant with businesses in North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula benefitted him. It was through Abu-Kamil Shuja’s works that Fibonacci became acquainted with the more advanced Asian curricula, on which he based the essays he later published and circulated in Europe. (Those imported treatises were mostly Chinese and Indian-based texts which scholars like Muhammad Al-Khwarizmi had translated, updated, and preserved). Thus, Fibonacci played a leading role in acquainting Europe with advanced Asian syllabuses that included the decimal system, the lattice multiplication methods, and the Indo-Arabic numerals which are (still) preferable to Roman ones: due to their ease of use. He also revived the Greco-Egyptian methodologies: embodied by the works of Euclid and Diophantus. Apart from updating Europe with better publications, Fibonacci used what he learned to author new books. Most famous among these were the Liber Abaci and the Liber Quadratorum. He also worked on various theorems, redefined their arithmetic congrua, and succeeded in solving several unresolved problems. His contributions were among the precursors of scientific offshoot of the Renaissance. Consequently, numerous concepts and items including: the Fibonacci numbers, the 6765 Fibonacci asteroid, and so on, were named after him.

21 Comments

  1. Excellent! That was a nice take on Fibonacci. Your passionate narrations made me read all your posts without boredom.

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