History of Complex Numbers

The development and acceptance of the complex numbers proceeded in parallel with the development and
acceptance of negative numbers.
Square roots of negative numbers appeared in Ars Magna (1545) by Girolamo Cardano, who would
consider several forms of quadratic equations (e.g., x + px = q, px - x= q, x = px + q) just in order to
avoid using negative numbers.
John Wallis (1616-1703), who gave the very first geometric interpretation of complex numbers, held a
strange belief that negative numbers were larger than infinity but not less than 0. This belief was shared
by L. Euler. Euler, in 1777 introduced i as the symbol for -1 and linked the exponential and
trigonometric functions in the famous formula eit = cos(t) + isin(t).
in 1637, Rene Descartes came up with the standard form for complex numbers, which is a+bi. The
unfortunate term imaginary has been coined by Descartes, although he meant it to be negative.
The modern geometric interpretation of complex numbers was given by Caspar Wessel (1745-1818), a
Norwegian surveyor, in 1797. Wessel treats complex numbers as vectors (without using the term) and
derives most of their properties.
In 1806, Jean Robert Argand wrote how to plot them in a plane, and today the plane is called the Argand
diagram.
Gauss, who gave a proof of the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra in 1799, thought (1925) that "the true
metaphysics of -1 is illusive." He overcame his doubts by 1831 with application of complex numbers to
Number Theory, which gave a tremendous boost to the acceptance of complex numbers in the
mathematical community.
Lord Hamilton (1805-1865) is responsible for the abstract notation (x, y), which he introduced in 1833.