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Madhava of Sangamagrama
--
The Founder of MathematicalAnalysis
Srinivasan N K
IntroductionThe foundational work for mathematical analysis and major aspects of what wenow call 'calculus' is attributed to Isaac Newton and Leibniz.They drew togetherthe early concepts of other mathematicians,especially about the limiting processfor functions ["passage to limits"] and the process of differentiating ,called thedifferential,infinitesimal calculus.It is true that both Newton and Liebniz laid thefoundations for differential and integral calculus as we know today.But much of the concepts of limits,infinite series,their convergence
,expansion of functions intoinfinite series by a method similar to Taylor series, using derivatives and factorials, integrationterm by term of a series---all these were given by the Indian [Hindu] mathematician of Kerala, Madhava of Sangamagrama in the 14th century.Therefore historians are beginning toadmit that Madhava could be the real founder of mathematical analysis.His work is almost twohundred years before Isaac Newton [1642-1727]and Leibniz[1646-1716].Madhava lived in the village Sangamagrama near Kochi, in Kerala state of India.Hisbirth year was probably 1345 and he lived upto 1425.He was born in a orthodox Nambudhribrahmin family.He was born in a small village Irinjalakuda(Sangamagrama),which is a smalltown today.He founded the
Kerala school of mathematics and
astronomywhich flourishedupto 16th century.He had numerous students and proteges--the most famous ones were Nilakantha andJyesthadeva.Much of the results are derived from the works of these two students:Nilakanthawrote 'Tantrasangraha" and Jyesthadeva, wrote "Yuktibhasa".The treatise "yuktibhasa" isconsidered the source book for the Calculus Madhava developed at that time---as we willelaborate.I have derived these points mostly from the articles of 1 J J OConner and E F Robertson [St Andrews University,Scotland] {the place where JamesGregory lived and worked whose 'Gregoryseries' we will mention later}2 Ian G Pearce3 Dennis Alameida & G G Joseph [ Exeter Univ and Manchester Univ,UK][These are available in various websites for any one to study.]The first westerner to recognise the Kerala school was Charles Whish who published a paper inthe Trans of Royal Asiatic Society [of Great Britiain and Ireland]in 1835..This work was largelyignored.C T Rajagopal and M S Rangachari [from Chennai] and other Indian mathematicians,particularly R C Gupta ,had done pioneering study in unearthing the work of Madhava and hisstudents and bringing them to light in the past thirty years .The earliest work is due to R CGupta in 1973.Almost all their publications were in Indian journals.This is perhaps the reasonthey were not picked up for a long time by western scholars.
Major Contributions of Madhava
1The foremost contribution of Madhava is the development of limiting process forfunctions,going from finite series toinfinite series with clear concepts of convergence of such series.---"to treat their limit passageto infinity".2 The infinite series expansion for trigonometric functions,sine x and arctanx as follows:
 
 This series was attributed to Newton, now it is called "Madhava-Newton Series" This series, which is the expansion of arctanx, is attributed to James Gregory[[1638-1675], thewell known Gregory series , seen in elementary calculus texts, is now called "Madhava-GregorySeries".3 The next step for Madhava was to set in the Madhava-Gregory series.We know thatTherefore, he obtained this well-known series: This series is attributed to Leonhard Euler [1707-1783] and called Euler series.It is now called'Madhava-Eulerseries".{this is also attributed to Leibniz}4 Madhava obtained another series : with the"correction terms"This is often credited to Leibniz too.5 Madhava obtained the approximation for pi upto 11 th decimal place and later to 13th decimalplaces using the following expression [using 21 terms]:from expansion of arctan(1/)=His value for pi upto 11 terms ,found only in Kerala manuscripts, is as follows: 6 Madhava obtained the Taylor series expansion for sin x as follows: This is again attributed to Gregory in the year 1668.[Brook Taylor (1685-1731)]This series illustrates that Madhava had found the expansion using differential coeffcients of sinx.In fact he had written: { some claim that Bhaskara II has already used this.}7 Madhava also,after finding the expansions, did perform term by term integration and also asummation formula replacing the familiar integral of [There were other contributions too;this school had developed the secant method to solvealgebraic equations ,used Rolle's theorem/mean value theorem and the Newton-Gaussinterpolation formula.The details are not available.]His students and later mathematicians of the Kerala school had expanded on these works.Theyalso found the approximations to pi upto many more decimal places...Onestudent,Parameshwara discovered the mean value theorem of calculus,perhaps derived fromBhaskara's work.This theorem is usually credited to Cauchy.The secant method for finding theroots of nonlinear equation is again attributed to Parameswara.Much remains to be discoveredabout the works of the Kerala School of Mathematics and Astronomy.It is appropriate to say that Madhava founded the classical (real) mathematical analysis, almosttwo hundred years before Newton,unknown to Arab or European scholars.[Unfortunately, many western professors ignored these sources of information. D E Smith ,in
 
his well-known book 'History of Mathematics' wrote in 1925 : ' not since Bhaskara II [b.1114]has she [India] produced a single native genius in this field' .It is unlikely that he had not heardof Srinivasa Ramanujan who worked with G H Hardy and P C Mahalanobis, both at CambridgeUniversity in the previous decade.!He chose to ignore such persons,along with Keralamathematicians.]Only since the last 15 years or so, some writers have given the credit to Madhava and itsschool.[See Victor J Katz- A history of mathematics--(1992),Addison_Wesley and latereditions..]G Joseph writes:We may consider Madhava of Sangamagrama [Kerala] to have been theFounder of mathematical Analysis.Some of his discoveries in this field show him to havepossesssed extra-ordinary intuition. [G Joseph--The Crest of the Peacock, Princeton Univpress,NJ 1991]
Why this contribution of Madhava and his school were not known earlier?
As mentioned earlier,the important reference in English literature seems to be the paper byCharles Whish in the Trans of Royal Asiatic Society[1835];his paper had largely been ignoredand not followed by western as well as Indian scholars.There are several 'obvious' and not soobvious reasons for this neglect.1 The work of Madhava and his school pertains to astronomical computations,not to pure mathas such.The gems of their mathematical insight and techniques seem to be buried in the heapof astronomical calculations.Therefore the gems did not shine apparently.2 Their works were in Malayalam language,spoken only in that region.Even other Indian scholarsin India may not have studied them,except a few other astronomers/astrologers.There were noquick translations at that time,till 1970's.3It is possible that the tendency to be secretive with such knowledge by Brahmin priestly classled to the situation when the manuscripts were not accessible to several scholars within thecountry[from the 14th-16th centuries.]4 Even the later investigative or exploratory studies by RC Gupta and the two Chennaiprofessors [CT Rajagopal and M S Gopalachari] in the late 1960's and later, were almost alwayspublished in Indian journals.Many of these journals are not to be found in western [european ornorth american] university libraries or research libraries.I am not sure whether these paperswere included in Abstracts journals/indices.Therefore they were known only to a few Indianscholars.5 The western professors were generally indifferent to such computational methods,under theimpression that much of such work flowed from the European centres,and failed to look forprecedence in other countries.6 Indian academia in history departments rarely attached much importance to historicalresearch in native math and science,except in the last few decades. It is strange ,however, thatthe mathematical academic community in India did not show interest in such works.At the present juncture,however,with the availability of internet and greater interest of researchscholars in the history of math, there is greater ineraction and faster communication around theworld on this topic.
Concluding Remarks
It can be concluded that Madhava of Kerala had discovered much of what is known as thefoundations of mathematical analysis [real analysis] which includes "Calculus".The work of Gregory and Taylor for series expansions were also found by him in exactly similar form.Heextended the concepts to explore infinte series and numerical integration [term by term] .Healso developed approximations for pi.He also did some work on continued fractions which werewell known to Indian mathematicians since the work of Arya Bhatta in 5th Century.Much work of this Kerala school may be unearthed in the next decade or so.The pioneering workof C T Rajagopal and.M S Rangachari ,and R C Gupta and other Indian professors and historiansshould be acknowledged.Unfortunately many of their papers were in Indian journals,not easilyaccessed by Western scholars.
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