History of Complex Numbers Mathematicians must have looked at square roots of negative numbers for quite a while because

they appear as formal solutions of the general quadratic equation whenever b2< 4c. However, there seemed to be no meaningful interpretation of such numbers. So their attempt to assert themselves was disregarded. The situation changed towards the end of the 15th century when the Italian mathematicians del Ferro and Nicolo Fontana (known as "Tartaglia") made progress towards solving cubic equations. In 1539, Tartaglia communicated his insight to GirolamoCardano. Cardano, together with his student Lodovico Ferrari, developed this method further. Thus the first published record of complex numbers dates back to 1545, when Cardano published his and Ferrari's work in Artismagnaesive de regulisalgebraicis liber unus. There he also explains the role of earlier work by del Ferro and Tartaglia. In the Ars Magna, Cardano presents formulae solving certain cubic and even quartic equations. Both formalae involve square root expressions of numbers which are potentially negative. New here is the phenomenon that these expressions can conspire to yield an integer as a final answer; i.e. the path to a very meaningful value of Cardano's formula led through the very alien territory of square roots of negative numbers. The territory of square roots of negative numbers must, indeed, have appeared very alien at the time. In fact, Cardano himself regarded them as something fictiteous that had no place in the real world. Thus he dismisses them as "useless". Nevertheless, Cardano's formula clearly demonstrated their formal usefulness. The first written account of rules for systematic computation appears in Rafael Bombelli's "L'algebra" in 1572. In particular, Bombelli is able to evaluate in a number of cases the expressions arising from Cardano's formula for a root of cubic polynomials. Subsequently, several generations of mathematicians performed formal computations involving complex numbers - computations with ever increasing skill and virtuosity. Surprising relations between real and complex numbers were discovered such as. or Euler's formulae However, considerable discomfort regarding the "nature" of complex numbers persisted. Here is what some eminent scientists of their times thought. Ren Descartes in 1637: states an informal version of the fundamental theorem of algebra but thinks that the zeros of a polynomial do not always correspond to any real quantity. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in 1702: imaginary roots are a subtle and wonderful resort of divine spirit ...

Isaac Newton in 1728: interprets complex roots of a polynomial merely as an explicit symptom of solutions which are impossible. Leonard Euler in 1768: Square roots of negative numbers are impossible numbers. Precursors to the interpretation of complex numbers as points in the plane are implicit in the work of Euler (1749) and appear explicitly in the works of John Wallis (1685), Caspar Wessel (1798) and Jean Robert Argand. However, only with Carl Friedrich Gau's 1831 publication did the idea of giving imaginary quantities a "real" existence as points in a plane become popular. In 1835, the formal interpretation of a complex number as and ordered pair of real numbers appears for the first time in the work of Sir William Rowan Hamilton. To Hamilton we also owe the introduction of the symbol as the square root of 1.

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