Indian Story of Mathematics

Indian Story of Mathematics.

There was a one number missing in Mathematics, it was Indians who introduced it to the world of mathematics. That number is “Zero”.  Before Indians invented it, there was no number zero to ancient Greeks, and it simply had not existed, for Egyptians, Chinese. Even though zero had been in use but as a place holder, an empty space to show a zero. This brilliant invention revolutionizes mathematics. Using this new number it is now possible to capture astronomically large number in a efficient way. 

There is cultural reason for invention of zero. For ancient Indians the concept of nothing has an eternity . According to Indian believe system the universe was born out of nothingness, and nothingness is the ultimate goal of humanity.

In 7^th century the brilliant Indian mathematician Brahma Gupta  prove some of the essential properties of zero. His rules about calculating with zero is taught in schools  all over the world.

1+0=1.

1-0=1.

1*0=0.

Indians even discovered a new sort of number “Negative number”. This invention gave a new idea of solving quadratic equations that is equations involving power of 2. Brahma Gupta understood the concept of negative number very well. He told that quadratic equations always have two solutions, one of which could be negative. These concepts were not known in west till 1600.

Indians contribution to the world of mathematics was not only new notation for zero. Indian mathematicians were responsible for making fundamental new discovery in the theory of “Trigonometry”.  Indians used their concept of trigonometry in many of their old astronomical observatories called “JANTAR MANTAR”.