Humanism
The collapse of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, although
History of Mathematics:The Renaissance
Chaogui Zhang
Department of Mathematics
Marywood University
Chaogui Zhang History of Mathematics:The Renaissance
Nicholas of Cusa
Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464) stood on the borderline
between medieval and modern times, representing the
weakness of the his time.
Although he was influenced by the Humanist concern for
antiquity and espoused Neoplatonic views, and had
access to some of Archimedes’ work, Nicholas of Cusa
was known as a misguided circle-squarer.
He believed in the “concordance of contraries” and
subsequently thought that he had arrived at a quadrature
through an ingenuous averaging of inscribed and
circumscribed polygons.
Chaogui Zhang History of Mathematics:The Renaissance
important in political history, was not as significant in the
history of mathematics.
Regardless of what the impact of the refugees fleeing to
Italy might be, mathematical activities started rising again
in the middle of the 15th century.
Few mathematical treatises were published following the
first printed books in Western Europe from 1447, but the
ones the were printed provided a base for expansion.
The rediscovery of the Greek mathematical treatises had a
very different influence in the 15th and 16th centuries
compared to that of the ancient Greek sciences and arts.
Chaogui Zhang History of Mathematics:The Renaissance
Regiomontanus
Nicholas of Cusa was the first modern European to attempt a
problem thatfasinated the best minds of antiquity and his effort
stimulated contemporaries to cricisism of his work.
Regiomontanus (1436-1476), a.k.a. Johannes Müller of
Königsberg, probably the most influential mathematician of
the 15th century, pointed out the error in Cusa’s reasoning.
Regiomontanus was a link between the classical learning
preserved at Constantinople and the young Renaissance
movement in Europe.
His early death at the age of 40 cut short his ambitious
project to print translations of Archimedes, Apollonius,
Heron, Ptolemy and others.
Chaogui Zhang History of Mathematics:The Renaissance
Regiomontanus De triangulis

One of Regiomontanus’ chief contribution was the
completion of a new Latin verion of Ptolemy’s Almagest,
which was begun by his teacher, Georg Peuerbach
(1423-1469).
He wrote textbooks of his own after completing the
translation of the Almagest. Among those were Epitome of
Ptolemy’s Almagest and De triangulis.
De triangulis of Regiomontanus helped Europe gain
preeminence in the field of trigonometry, while previous
work such as those by Peuerbach and others treated
trigonometry mostly as a tool in astronomy and not much
significance of its own.
The first book of De triangulis was written in about 1464
and it opens with fundamental notions on magnitudes and
ratios, largely derived from Euclid.
It then presents more than fifty propostions onthe solution
of triangles using properties of right trangles.
Book II starts with the law of sines and then includes
problems on determining sides, andles and areas of plane
triangles given suitable conditions.
Book III and IV contained results on “spherics” and
spherical trigonometry.
Regiomontanus used area “formulas” written out in words.

Chaogui Zhang History of Mathematics:The Renaissance Chaogui Zhang History of Mathematics:The Renaissance

Tabulae directionum Application of Algebra to Geometry

Another trigonometric treatise by Regiomontanus is

Tabulae directionum.
Regiomontanus also considered algebra problems, which
He provided new tables of trigonometric function, including
were results of geometric constructions.
tagent, as did some other 15th century astonomers.
His rhetorical algebra had very restricted influence due to
Regiomontanus used large radius values like his
not only its form, but also his early death.
predecessors to avoid fractions in the tables.
Regiomontanus was a very important transitional figure in
Tabulae directionum, as well as De triangulis, was
the history of science. He shared the love of classical
published after the author’s sudden death, which delayed
learning by the Humanists, with a strong inclination toward
their effect considerably, although the works were known to
the sciences.
the mathematicians at Nuremberg in manuscript form.
His sudden death cut short all of his ambitions and was a
The central Europe cities such as Vienna, Cracow, Prague,
great loss to astronomy and mathematics.
and Nuremberg were the leaders in astronomy and
mathematics from the middle of the 15th to the middle of
the 16th century.

Chaogui Zhang History of Mathematics:The Renaissance Chaogui Zhang History of Mathematics:The Renaissance
Nicolas Chuquet’s Triparty
An isolated French mathematician, Nicolas Chuquet (ca. 1500),
wrote a manuscript titled Triparty en la science des nombres,
which was not published until the late 19th century.
Very little is known about Nicolas Chuquet. He was born in
Paris, got a bachelor’s degree in medicine and practiced at
Lyons.
The Triparty was composed in 1484 and its level and
significance was perhaps the most outstanding since the
Liber abaci of Fibonacci.
The first of the “Three Parts” is on the rational arithmetic
operations on numbers and it also contains an explanation
of the Hindu-Arabic numerals. It is mostly in rhetorical
form.
Chaogui Zhang History of Mathematics:The Renaissance
Triparty
Chuquet also observed the relationships between the
powers of the number 2 and the indices of these powers in
a table from 0 to 20, where the sums of the indices
correspond to products of the powers.
Such observation is of course equivalent to a logarithmic
table.
The next half of part three in the Triparty is concerned with
the solution of equations.
Chuquet was for the first time putting an isolated negative
number in an algebraic equation.
He occasionally viewed 0 as a solution sought in an
equation, although in general he still rejected 0 as a root.
Chaogui Zhang History of Mathematics:The Renaissance
Triparty
The second part is on roots of numbers and some
syncopation was used so that an expression like
p √
14 − 180 appears as R)2 .14.m̄.R)2 180.
The last part concerning “Regle des premiers” (the rule of
the unknown, i.e., algebra) is probably the most important.
Chuquet invented an exponential notation of great
significance so that modern expressions like 6x 2 would
appear as .6.2 in the Triparty.
Similar notations were used for zero and negative
exponents, for example, 9x −2 was written as .9.2.m. , where
the m is for moins.
Chaogui Zhang History of Mathematics:The Renaissance
Luca Pacioli’s Summa
In 1494, the Summa de arithmetica, geometrica, proportioni et
proportionalita of the friar Luca Pacioli(1445-1514) (a.k.a. Luca
di Borgo) was published and is regarded as the first printed
work on algebra.
The Summa compiled a great amount of material from four
fields: arithmetic, algebra, very elementary Euclidean
geometry, and double-entry bookkeeping.
One of the commercial arithmetic works Pacioli borrowed
from is the compendio de lo abaco of Francesco Pellos (fl.
1450-1500), which contained an early form of our current
decimal point.
The Summa lacks the exponential notations found in the
Triparty, but it used a greater amount of syncopation by
abbreviations. Notations such as p (for addition), m (for
subtraction), as well as co, ce, and ae (for cosa, censo,
and aequalis) were used by Pacioli in the book.
Chaogui Zhang History of Mathematics:The Renaissance
Portrait of Luca Pacioli
Attributed to Jacopo de’ Barbari (with disputes)
Chaogui Zhang History of Mathematics:The Renaissance
Germanic Albegras
Although the Renaissance period started with renewed interest
in art and learning in Italy, other parts of Europe would soon
also join the parade. Germany, for example, also provided
plenty of works in mathematics.
In 1489, Johann Widman (born ca. 1460) published
Rechnung uff allen Kauffmanschafften, which contained
the first printed use of our + and - signs.
Die Coss was written in 1524 by the famous
Rechenmeister, Adam Riese (1492-1559), who was the
most influential German writer in the move to replace the
old computation with the newer (Hindu-Arabic) method.
Other significant works on algebra by German authors
include the Coss (1525) by Christoph Rudolff, the
Rechnung (1527) by Peter Apian, and the Arithmetica
integra (1544) by Michael Stifel.
Chaogui Zhang History of Mathematics:The Renaissance
Leonardo da Vinci
Pacioli published two more works on geometry, a Latin
translation of Euclid’s Elements (with little influence), and
another work titled (De divina proportione in 1509. The
excellent figures in the latter of the two were created by
Leonardo da Vinci.
Picalio and da Vinci collaborated with and taught each
other around the turn from the 15th to the 16th century for
several years.
Leonardo da Vinci showed his impressive talent in science
and engineering in his notebooks containing about 13,000
pages of notes and drawings.
The notebooks were written in mirror-image cursive from
right to left, probably because it was more convenient for
the left-handed da Vinci.
Chaogui Zhang History of Mathematics:The Renaissance
Cardan’s Ars Magna
In 1545, Geronimo Cardano (1501-1576) published the Ars
Magna, which contained the most famous solution of cubic
equations. This year is often marked as the beginning of
modern mathematics.
It is well known and Cardano admitted that he obtained
hints for solving the cubic from Niccolo Tartaglia (ca. 1500
- 1557).
The book also contained the solution of the quartic, which
was first discovered by Ludovico Ferrari ( 1522 - 1565).
There is a great deal of controversy related to the solution
of the cubic equations involving figures like Scipione del
Ferro, Ferrari, Tartaglia, and Cardano.
Chaogui Zhang History of Mathematics:The Renaissance
Solution of the Cubic
Cubic equations of the form x 3 + px = q can be solved
with a substitution like x = u − v and make uv = p/3.
General cubic equations involving x 2 can be rewritten into
the form above first and then it can be solved the same
way.
This process sometimes would produce a solution
involving the square root of negative numbers even when
the cubic is known to have real roots. Cardano wasn’t able
to resolve the situation (given that the theory of complex
numbers had not been developed yet at the time).
Chaogui Zhang History of Mathematics:The Renaissance
Ferrari’s Solution of the Quartic Equation
Then find a y value that makes the right hand side a
perfect square. This means the discrinimant must be zero,
i.e., 602 − 4(2y + 6)(y 2 + 12y ) = 0.
The equation above simplifies to a cubic in y :
y 3 + 15y 2 + 36y = 450, known today as the “resolvent
cubic” of the given quartic. Solving this gives us
s s
r r
3 1 1 3 1 1
y = 287 + 80449 + 287 − 80449 − 5.
2 4 2 4
Substitute this y back into the second step and take the
square root.
Solve the quadratic resulted to find x for the original quartic
equation.
Chaogui Zhang History of Mathematics:The Renaissance
Ferrari’s Solution of the Quartic Equation
Since the cubic term can be easily eliminated, a general
solution of a quartic in the form of x 4 + px 2 + q = rx would be
enough to solve all quartic equations. Let’s consider
x 4 + 6x 2 + 36 = 60x as an example.
Make the left a perfect square by adding appropriate
square and constant terms:
(x 2 + 6)2 = 6x 2 + 60x.
Add a new unknown y into the equation and get
(x 2 + 6 + y )2 = 6x 2 + 60x + y 2 + 12y + 2yx 2 ,
which becomes
(x 2 + 6 + y )2 = (2y + 6)x 2 + 60x + (y 2 + 12y ),
Chaogui Zhang History of Mathematics:The Renaissance
Irreducible Cubics and Complex Numbers
The publication of the Ars Magna inspired generations of
mathematicians to pursue solutions of higher order
polynomial equations for many years to come, with no
possibility of success as we know that such general
solutions do not exist. However, the journey produced
excellent mathematical results.
The solution of cubics also led mathematicians to look at
the possibility of taking the square root of a negative
number.
Rafael Bombelli (ca. 1526-1573) had “a wild thought” about
the solutions of cubics that involved square root of negative
numbers even though the equation is known to have a real
solution like x = 4 for x 3 = 15x + 4. The solution using the
p √ p √
3 3
cubic formula gives us x = 2 + −121 + 2 − −121.
Maybe this value is indeed equal to 4.
Chaogui Zhang History of Mathematics:The Renaissance
Robert Recorde
England saw little mathematical development after
Bradwardine’s death for two centuries. Robert Recorde was the
only Mathematician from England with some fame in the 16th
century.
Robert Recorde (c.a. 1510 - 1558) studied and taught
mathematics at both Oxford and Cambridge. He received a
medical degree from Cambridge and became a physician
to Edward VI and Queen Mary.
Recorde’s first mathematical work was the Grounde of
Artes (1541) was a popular arithmetic on computation with
commercial applications.
He also wrote Castle of Knowledge, Pathewaie to
Knowledge, both of which were published in 1551.
Recorde’s most famous work is titled The Whetstone of
Witte, published in 1557. It contained the first printed
equality sign.
Chaogui Zhang History of Mathematics:The Renaissance
Others
A few more noteworthy figures from the second half of the 15th
century to the 16th century are:
Pierre de la Ramée, a.k.a. Ramus (1515-1572):
Mathematics Pedagogy
Johannes Werner (1468-1522): Geometry
Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528): Geometry
Francesco Maurolico (1494-1575): Geometry
Peter Apian (1495-1552): Cartography
Gerard Mercator (1512-1594): Cartography
Chaogui Zhang History of Mathematics:The Renaissance
Nicholas Copernicus
Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543) is of course thought of
mostly as an astronomer who demonstrated that earth
moves around the sun, not the other way around.
Inevitably, though, he was also a trigonometer.
His most celebrated De revolutionibus orbium coelestium
in 1543 contained many significant results on trigonometry,
which was also published separately earlier in De lateribus
et angulis triangulorum.
Georg Joachim Rheticus (1514-1576) studied under
Copernicus from 1539. He combined the ideas of
Regiomontanus and Copernicus, together with views of his
own. The result is the two-volume Opus palatinum de
triangulis, in which the author considered trigonometric
functions as related to lines in a right triangle instead of the
arc of a circle. All six trigonometric functions were in full
use in elaborate tables.
Chaogui Zhang History of Mathematics:The Renaissance