Nicolas Chuquet (1445–1488)

Born 1445 CE, died 1488 CE.

Nicolas Chuquet (French: [ʃykɛ]; born c. 1445 – c. 1455; died c. 1488 – c. 1500) was a French mathematician. He invented his own notation for algebraic concepts and exponentiation. He may have been the first mathematician to recognize zero and negative numbers as exponents. In 1475, Jehan Adam recorded the words "bymillion" and "trimillion" (for 1012 and 1018) and it is believed that these words or similar ones were in general use at that time. In 1484, Chuquet wrote an article Triparty en la science des nombres, which was unpublished in his lifetime. Most of it, however, was copied without attribution by Estienne de La Roche in his 1520 textbook, l'Arismetique. In the 1870s, scholar Aristide Marre discovered Chuquet's manuscript and published it in 1880. The manuscript contained notes in de la Roche's handwriting.

Text from the Wikipedia article Nicolas_Chuquet, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

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