Bhskara II

Bhskara[1] ( (11141185), also known as Bhskara II and Bhskarchrya ("Bhskara the teacher")), was an Indian mathematician and astronomer. He was born near Vijjadavida (Bijpur in modern Karnataka). Bhskara is said to have been the head of an astronomical observatory at Ujjain, the leading mathematical center of ancient India. He lived in the Sahyadri region.[1] Bhskara and his works represent a significant contribution to mathematical and astronomical knowledge in the 12th century. He has been called the greatest mathematician of medieval India.[2] His main work Siddhnta Shiromani, (Sanskrit for "Crown of treatises,"[3]) is divided into four parts called Lilvati, Bijaganita, Grahaganita and Goldhyya.[4] These four sections deal with arithmetic, algebra, mathematics of the planets, and spheres respectively. He also wrote another treatise named Karan Kautoohal. Bhskara's work on calculus predates Newton and Leibniz by half a millennium.[5][6] He is particularly known in the discovery of the principles of differential calculus and its application to astronomical problems and computations. While Newton and Leibniz have been credited with differential and integral calculus, there is strong evidence to suggest that Bhskara was a pioneer in some of the principles of differential calculus. He was perhaps the first to conceive the differential coefficient and differential calculus.[7]

Family
Bhaskaracharya was born into a family belonging to the Deshastha Brahmin community.[8] History records his great-great-great-grandfather holding a hereditary post as a court scholar, as did his son and other descendants. His father Mahesvara[1] was as an astrologer, who taught him mathematics, which he later passed on to his son Loksamudra. Loksamudra's son helped to set up a school in 1207 for the study of Bhskara's writings.

Legends
His book on arithmetic is the source of interesting legends that assert that it was written for his daughter, Lilavati. In one of these stories, which is found in a Persian translation of Lilavati, Bhaskara II studied Lilavati's horoscope and predicted that her husband would die soon after the marriage if the marriage did not take place at a particular time. To alert his daughter at the correct time, he placed a cup with a small hole at the bottom of a vessel filled with water, arranged so that the cup would sink at the beginning of the propitious hour. He put the device in a room with a warning to Lilavati to not go near it. In her curiosity though, she went to look at the device and a pearl from her nose ring accidentally dropped into it, thus upsetting it. The marriage took place at the wrong time and she was soon widowed. Bhaskara II conceived the modern mathematical convention that when a finite number is divided by zero, the result is infinity. In his book Lilavati, he reasons: "In this quantity also which has zero as its divisor there is no change even when many [quantities] have entered into it or come out [of it], just as at the time of destruction and creation when throngs of creatures enter into and come out of [him, there is no change in] the infinite and unchanging [Vishnu]".