Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Cubic and Quartic Equations
Cubic and Quartic Equations
From the point of view of medieval mathematicians, there are actually 13 different
types of cubic equations rather than just one. Basically this is because they not merely
did not admit imaginary or complex numbers, but only considered positive real numbers, so also did not admit negative numbers or zero. Thus to them was a
different type of equation from
. Now we can write a general cubic equation
or the equation is not genuinely cubic) in the form
(in which
!
after dividing by a constant. The case where ! leads to an inadmissible root "#
and anyway is easily soluble, so we get different cases as
%
'&
%
(&
%
))!'&* $%
))!'&*
are not taken seriously as cubic equations (and indeed the first has no real positive
solution), while evidently the cases
If we take /"!:9<; , the coefficient of vanishes so that the equation can be written in
the form
>=?'8
A B 2,?
ADBG 2H=I9<;'8
Setting J KA and L !B these equations amount to
2,?
J L
2H= 9NMCO
JL
and solutions of these equations can be found by considering the quadratic
M.Q
R S ?
MFT
S =
;7T
8
As J and L enter into the problem symmetrically, we may as well take J as the expression with the sign and L as the expression with the 2 sign. We can then take
A
VW U J
BG 2H=I9<;CAF8
as AB , that is as
VW U J XW U L 8
If we suppose the roots are IY , and , then the equation must be equivalent to
so that
\Y^ #
=
\Y^\Y_ `
IY a
2,?
and hence it can shown that
(cf. Chapter 5, h 6 of the book by Birkhoff and MacLane quoted below). The latter
quantity is often referred to as the discriminant and denoted i . We see that the above
expressions for J an L can be written as
2,?j9NM
so that
W U J W U L
U 2,?j9jM
2 i 9ml:Cn
Q!k
2 i 9mlpjn)
k
U 2,?j9NM
2
2 i 9l:Cnm8
k
l-0s0s (&
s 2
M
u
W ;
&
M
s f2
M
23u
W ;
8
M
Then svl and we can replace A by swxA and B by szy:B where u&x{.vlj&|M'&}; . Now A
and B were constructed to satisfy
A B a2,?
ABGa2H=I9<;
but while
for any u&e{ , the equation
m- -j#
3
, we can
(where is not necessarily the base of natural logarithms) in which
"
l
divide through by a constant, so that we can act as if
. We then define
#6/ ,
so that the equation becomes
1 .23/45- 1 .23/4 1 .23/4t 1
26/'47!'8
If we take /"!:9g , the coefficient of vanishes so the equation can be written in the
form
(=(D-?"0r#(8
=( 2,?G2[
contains two of the terms of the square of = . Complete the square by adding
=( = to each side to get
1 =D4t#M=(D>=D0=-=2`?.2[<8
We now introduce another
unknown for the purpose of converting
1
1 the left-hand side of
the this equation into 3="m4 . This is done by adding M 6=D45 to each
side, and leads to
?<
g 1 = MNm4 1 =D23,M=:4&
which requires solving a cubic in , namely
References
G Birkhoff and S. MacLane, A Survey of Modern Algebra, New York, NY: Macmillan
1941, 1953 and 1965, Chapter V, h]h 5-6 and Chapter XV, h 7.
D M Burton, The History of Mathematics: An Introduction, Boston, MA, etc: Allyn
and Bacon 1985, Chapter 7.
4
G Cardano, Ars Magna or The Rules of Algebra, translated and edited by T.R. Witmer,
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1968 and New York, NY: Dover 1993.
J Fauvel and J Gray, The History of Mathematics: A Reader, Macmillan: Basingstoke
and London 1987, Chapter 8, h 8A.
S Neumark, Solution of Cubic and Quartic Equations, Oxford, etc.: Pergamon 1965.
H W Turnbull, Theory of Equations, Edinburgh and London: Oliver and Boyd 1939,
1944, 1946, 1947 and 1952, Chapters IX and X.
B L van der Waerden, Modern Algebra, New York, NY: Ungar 1949 and 1953, Volume
I, Chapter VII, h 58.
P.M.L.