EUROPIAN IN THE

MEDIEVAL
RENAISSANCE, AND
REFORMATION PERIOD
INTRODUCTION

 The Medieval period distinguishes itself as a transitional age.

 The name alone, meaning Middle Ages denotes that it came between two great
ages: the classical civilization of the Ancient World and the Renaissance which
followed.
 It was a long, slow era which can be divided into two primary periods.
 The Early Middle Ages, which are generally defined as having lasted between 500
and 900 CE are sometimes referred to the Dark Ages, since the great civilization of
Rome had now collapsed, leaving the nations of Europe isolated and alone again.
 The relative peace caused by the Roman occupation devolves into a struggle for
survival. This was an age of nomadic warrior tribes, such as the culture typified in
the great Anglo-Saxon epic, Beowulf.
INTRODUCTION

 The Late Middle Ages, lasting roughly from 900 - 1400 CE, are often called the High
Middle Ages. During this time, Christianity becomes the dominate religion of Europe
and the nomadic tribes began to settle down and national identities which we would
recognize in modern Europe began to emerge.
 Rather than the warlords of the nomadic tribes, Kings began to rule and Knights
became the force of war.
 Education began to spread again, literacy rose slightly, and books became more
prevalent.
 The Reformation was a split in the Latin Christian church instigated by Luther in 1517
and evolved by many others over the next decade—a campaign that created and
introduced a new approach to Christian faith called 'Protestantism.'
 LEONARDO OF PISA
 The 13th Century Italian
Leonardo of Pisa, better
known by his nickname
Fibonacci, was perhaps the
most talented Western
mathematician of the middle
Ages.
 Fibonacci is best known,
though, for his introduction
into Europe of a particular
number sequence, which
has since become known as
Fibonacci Numbers or the
Fibonacci Sequence.
  The story began in Pisa, Italy in the year 1202.
 Leonardo Pisano Bigollo was a young man in his
twenties, a member of an important trading family
of Pisa.
 In his travels throughout the Middle East, he was
captivated by the mathematical ideas that had
Fibonacci come west from India through the Arabic countries.
 When he returned to Pisa he published these ideas
in a book on mathematics called Liber Abaci, which
became a landmark in Europe.
 Leonardo, who has since come to be known
as Fibonacci, became the most celebrated
mathematician of the Middle Ages.
Fibonacci
Sequence
Golden Ratio
  This value is referred to as the Golden Ratio,
also known as the Golden Mean, Golden
Section, Divine Proportion, and is usually
Golden Ratio denoted by the Greek letter phi φ (or
sometimes the capital letter Phi Φ).
 Lattice
Multiplication
NICOLE ORESME

also known as
Nicholas Oresme,
or Nicolas d'Oresme.

He was one of the

significant philosopher of
the Middle Ages.
  A French mathematician who invented coordinate
geometry long before Descartes.
 He was the first to use a fractional exponent and on
infinite series.
 He was one of the most eminent scholastic
philosophers, famous for his original ideas, his
independent thinking and his critique of several
Aristotelian tenets.
 His work provided some basis for the development
of modern mathematics and science.
 He was considered as the greatest medieval
Oresme economist.
  Nicole Oresme made significant contributions to late medieval
natural philosophy.
 He studied and wrote about philosophy, mathematics,
economics, physics, musicology, and psychology, and
anticipated the ideas of early modern scientists such
as Copernicus, Galileo and Descartes.
 He developed a geometric model to quantify and compare
the intensities of qualities and of speeds.
 Oresme also developed the language of ratios, introduced by
Thomas Bradwardine to relate speed to force and resistance,
and applied it to physical and cosmological questions.
 He made a careful study of musicology and used his findings
to develop the use of irrational exponents and the first theory
Oresme that sounds and light are a transfer of energy that does not
displace matter.
 More than thirty-four books and treatises by Nicole Oresme
are extant.
GEROLAMO
CARDANO
Italian
physician and
mathematician
  Italian physician, mathematician, and astrologer who gave
the first clinical description of typhus fever and whose
book Ars magna (The Great Art; or The Rules of Algebra)
is one of the cornerstones in the history of algebra.
 Cardano was the most outstanding mathematician of his
time.
 In 1539 he published two books on arithmetic embodying
his popular lectures, the more important being Practica
arithmetica et mensurandi singularis (“Practice of
Mathematics and Individual Measurements”).
 His Ars magna (1545) contained the solution of the
cubic equation, for which he was indebted to the Venetian
Cardano mathematician Niccolò Tartaglia, and also the solution of
t h e q u a r t i c e q u a t i o n f o u n d b y C a r d a n o ’s f o r m e r
servant, Lodovico Ferrari.
  His Liber de ludo aleae (The Book on Games of Chance)
presents the first systematic computations of probabilities,
a century before Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat.
 Cardano’s popular fame was based largely on books
dealing with scientific and philosophical questions,
especially De subtilitate rerum (“The Subtlety of Things”),
a collection of physical experiments and inventions,
interspersed with anecdotes.
 From 1562 he was a professor in Bologna, but in 1570 he
was suddenly arrested on the accusation of heresy. After
several months in jail he was permitted to abjure privately,
but he lost his position and the right to publish books.
Cardano Before his death he completed his autobiography, De
propria vita (The Book of My Life).


FRANÇOIS VIÈTE
French amateur mathematician and astronomer who
introduced the first systematic algebraic notation in his
book In artem analyticam isagoge .

He was also involved in deciphering codes.

 FRANÇOIS VIÈTE
 Although the Ad harmonicon coeleste was never
published, Viète did begin publishing the Canon
Mathematicus in 1571 which was intended as a
mathematical introduction to the astronomy treatise.
 The Canon Mathematicus covers trigonometry; it
contains trigonometric tables, it also gives the
mathematics behind the construction of the tables, and
it details how to solve both plane and spherical
triangles. It is interesting that in the second part of the
Canon Mathematicus Viète wrote decimal fractions with
the fractional part printed in smaller type than the
integral and separated from the latter by a vertical line.
 FRANÇOIS VIÈTE
 Viète introduced the first systematic algebraic notation in his
book In artem analyticam isagoge published at Tours
in 1591. The title of the work may seem puzzling, for it
means "Introduction to the analytic art" which hardly
makes it sound like an algebra book. However, Viète did
not find Arabic mathematics to his liking and based his
work on the Italian mathematicians such as Cardan, and
the work of ancient Greek mathematicians.
 I n his t reat ise I n art em analyt icam isagoge Viè t e
demonstrated the value of symbols introducing letters to
represent unknowns.
 He suggested using letters as symbols for quantities, both
known and unknown.
 He used vowels for the unknowns and consonants for
known quantities. The convention where letters near the
beginning of the alphabet represent known quantities
while letters near the end represent unknown quantities
was introduced later by Descartes in La Gèometrie. This
convention is used today, often without people realizing
that a convention is being used at all.
 Niccolo Fontana, known as Tartaglia, was born in Brescia in 1499
or 1500, the son of an honest mail rider Michele Fontana who was
known as 'Micheletto the Rider'. Micheletto would ride his horse
between Brescia and other towns in the district making deliveries.
Although he was poor, Micheletto did his best for his wife,
daughter and two sons, and Niccolo attended school from the age
of about four years. Life might have been very different for Niccolo
had tragedy not come when he was six years old, for at that time
his father was murdered while out making deliveries. From being
a child in a poor family, he was suddenly plunged into total
poverty.
 Niccolo was nearly killed as a teenager when, in 1512, the French
captured his home town and put it to the sword. The French army
was commanded by Gaston de Foix and they had suffered
humiliation at the hands of some determined Brescia militia. They
decided to teach the local inhabitants a lesson and retook Brescia
during seven days of fighting in which time 46,000 residents of
the city were killed in an act of revenge. Amidst the general
slaughter, the twelve year old Niccolo took refuge in the cathedral
with his mother and younger sister, but was dealt horrific facial
sabre wounds by a French soldier that cut his jaw and palate. He
was left for dead and even when his mother discovered that he
was still alive she could not afford to pay for any medical help.
However, his mother's tender care ensured that the youngster did
survive, but in later life Niccolo always wore a beard to
camouflage his disfiguring scars and he could only speak with
difficulty, hence his nickname Tartaglia, or stammerer.
 Tartaglia was self taught in mathematics but, having an
extraordinary ability, his mother was able to find him a patron.
Ludovico Balbisonio took him to Padua to study there, but when
he returned with his patron to Brescia he made himself unpopular
by having an inflated opinion of himself. He left Brescia to earn
his living teaching mathematics at Verona which he did between
1516 and 1518. Later, still in Verona, he taught at a school in the
Palazzo Mizzanti but it is recorded that at that time he was
married with a family, yet was very poor. He moved to Venice in
1534. As a lowly mathematics teacher in Venice, Tartaglia
gradually acquired a reputation as a promising mathematician by
participating successfully in a large number of debates.
He was a poor engineer known for designing fortifications, a
surveyor of topography (seeking the best means of defence or
offence in battles) and a bookkeeper in the Republic of Venice.
But he was also a self-taught, but wildly ambitious, mathematician.
He distinguised himself by producing, among other things, the first
Italian translations of works by Archimedes and Euclid from
uncorrupted Greek texts (for two centuries, Euclid's "Elements" had
been taught from two Latin translations taken from an Arabic
source, parts of which contained errors making them all but
unusable), as well as an acclaimed compilation of mathematics of
his own.
Tartaglia's greatest legacy to mathematical history, though,
occurred when he won the 1535 Bologna University mathematics
competition by demonstrating a general algebraic formula for
solving cubic equations (equations with terms including x3),
something which had come to be seen by this time as an
impossibility, requiring as it does an understanding of the square
roots of negative numbers
In the competition, he beat Scipionedel Ferro (or at least del Ferro's
assistant, Fior), who had coincidentally produced his own partial
solution to the cubic equation problem not long before. Although del
Ferro's solution perhaps predated Tartaglia’s, it was much more
limited, and Tartaglia is usually credited with the first general
solution. In the highly competitive and cut-throat environment of
16th Century Italy, Tartaglia even encoded his solution in the form
of a poem in an attempt to make it more difficult for other
mathematicians to steal it.
Ta r t a g l i a ’ s d e f i n i t i v e m e t h o d w a s , h o w e v e r, l e a k e d t o
GerolamoCardano (or Cardan), a rather eccentric and
confrontational mathematician, doctor and Renaissance man, and
author throughout his lifetime of some 131 books. Cardano
published it himself in his 1545 book "Ars Magna" (despite having
promised Tartaglia that he would not), along with the work of his
own brilliant student Lodovico Ferrari. Ferrari, on seeing Tartaglia's
cubic solution, had realized that he could use a similar method to
solve quartic equations (equations with terms including x4).
In this work, Tartaglia, Cardano and Ferrari between them
demonstrated the first uses of what are now known as complex
numbers, combinations of real and imaginary numbers of the type a
+ bi, where i is the imaginary unit √-1. It fell to another Bologna
resident, Rafael Bombelli, to explain, at the end of the 1560's,
exactly what imaginary numbers really were and how they could be
used.
Although both of the younger men were acknowledged in the
foreword of Cardano's book, as well as in several places within its
body, Tartgalia engaged Cardano in a decade-long fight over the
publication. Cardano argued that, when he happened to see (some
years after the 1535 competition) Scipionedel Ferro's unpublished
independent cubic equation solution, which was dated before
Tartaglia's, he decided that his promise to Tartaglia could
legitimately be broken, and he included Tartaglia's solution in his
next publication, along with Ferrari's quartic solution.
Although both of the younger men were acknowledged in the foreword of
Cardano's book, as well as in several places within its body, Tartgalia
engaged Cardano in a decade-long fight over the publication. Cardano
argued that, when he happened to see (some years after the 1535
competition) Scipionedel Ferro's unpublished independent cubic equation
solution, which was dated before Tartaglia's, he decided that his promise to
Tartaglia could legitimately be broken, and he included Tartaglia's solution
in his next publication, along with Ferrari's quartic solution.
Ferrari eventually came to understand cubic and quartic equations much
better than Tartaglia. When Ferrari challenged Tartaglia to another public
debate, Tartaglia initially accepted, but then (perhaps wisely) decided not
to show up, and Ferrari won by default. Tartaglia was thoroughly
discredited and became effectively unemployable.
Poor Tartaglia died penniless and unknown, despite having produced (in
addition to his cubic equation solution) the first translation of Euclid’s
“Elements” in a modern European language, formulated Tartaglia's
Formula for the volume of a tetrahedron, devised a method to obtain
binomial coefficients called Tartaglia's Triangle (an earlier version of
Pascal's Triangle), and become the first to apply mathematics to the
investigation of the paths of cannonballs (work which was later validated
by Galileo's studies on falling bodies). Even today, the solution to cubic
equations is usually known as Cardano’s Formula and not Tartgalia’s.
  Lodovico Ferrari, Italian mathematician who was the first to find an
algebraic solution to the biquadratic, or quartic, equation (an algebraic
equation that contains the fourth power of the unknown quantity but no
higher power).
 From a poor family, Ferrari was taken into the service of the noted Italian
mathematician Gerolamo Cardano as an errand boy at the age of 15. By
attending Cardano’s lectures, he learned Latin, Greek, and mathematics.
In 1540 he succeeded Cardano as public mathematics lecturer in Milan,
at which time he found the solution of the quartic equation, later
published in Cardano’s Ars magna (1545; “Great Art”). The publication of
Ars magna brought Ferrari into a celebrated controversy with the noted
Italian mathematician Niccolò Tartaglia over the solution of the cubic
Lodovico Ferrari equation.
 After six printed challenges and counterchallenges, Ferrari and Tartaglia
met in Milan on Aug. 10, 1548, for a public mathematical contest, of
which Ferrari was declared the winner. This success brought him
immediate fame, and he was deluged with offers for various positions.
He accepted that from Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga, regent of Mantua, to
become supervisor of tax assessments, an appointment that soon made
him wealthy. Later, ill health and a quarrel with the cardinal forced him
to give up his lucrative position. He then accepted a professorship in
mathematics at the University of Bologna, where he died shortly
thereafter.
Lodovico Ferrari
 Basic
mathematical
notation, with
dates of first
use
  Copernicus was born in Poland. Got a degree from the University
of Crakow. Studied medicine and canon law in Padua & Bologna.
 Returned to Poland in 1503, and worked as a church administrator
under his uncle, a Bishop.
 He was clearly fascinated with astronomy, but felt Ptolemy’s
eccentrics and especially the equant, violated Aristotle’s principles
of motion. Thought that he could return to a more Aristotelean
solution by putting the Sun at the center of the solar system.
 Wrote a short description of his ideas in the Commentariolus ca.
Nicolaus Copernicus (~1500 AD), a Polish clerk challenged
Ptolemy’s model.
 Published his theory in book: De revolutionists orbium coelestium
(On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres)’ He introduced
NICOLAUS (again) the Heliocentric Model His motivation was simplicity. The
COPERNICUS critical realization that Earth is not the center of the Universe we
call ‘The Copernican Revolution’ He entered the university of
Cracow where he Studied painting and mathematics.
 He proposed that the sun was stationary in the center of the
universe and the earth revolved around it. He thereby created a
concept of a universe in which the distances of the planets from the
sun bore a direct relationship to the size of their orbits.
His idea was very controversial; nevertheless, it was the start of a
change in the way the world was viewed, and Copernicus came to
be seen as the initiator of the Scientific Revolution.

NICOLAUS
COPERNICUS
Heliocentric model
of the solar system
The Sun is the center of the
solar system. Only Moon
orbits around Earth; Planets
orbit around Sun. Created a
simpler more accurate
model that could be used to
predict future location of
planets.
  These Axioms were:
 1. There is no single Centre for all orbits in the universe.
 2. The Earth’s Centre is not the Centre of the universe, but only of
The basic ideas of the lunar orbit.
Copernicus  3. The Centre of the universe is near the sun.
already appear in  4. The distance from the Earth to the sun is imperceptible
the 7 ’axioms’ of compared with the distance to the stars.
his first published  5. The daily rotation of the Earth accounts for the apparent daily
work, the rotation of the stars, which themselves are immobile.
Commentariolus.  6. The apparent annual cycle of solar motion is caused by the
Earth revolving round it once every year.
 7. The apparent retrograde motion of the planets is caused by the
motion of the Earth around the sun, and from which one observes
the planets.
  www.britannica.com/science/mathematics
 math.berkeley.edu/~robin/Viete/work.htm
 lhttp://nrich.maths.org/public/viewer.php?obj_id=2549
 https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-
transcripts-and_x0002_maps/heliocentric-theory
 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_algebra
References  nrich.maths.org/6546
 www.thoughtco.com/medieval-and-renaissance-history-4133289
 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerolamo_Cardano
 www.britannica.com/biography/Nicholas-Oresme
 enwww.storyofmathematics.com.wikipedia.org/wiki/François_Viète
 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics