MEDIEVAL AND

RENAISSANCE
MATHEMATICS

BY: Tajana Novak, Andrea Gudelj, Srđana Obradović, Mirna Marković

April, 2013.
MEDIEVAL MATHEMATICS
 From the 4th to the 15th centuries
 the early Middle Ages or Dark Ages (from
400AD to 1400AD)
 period of stagnation
 the late Middle Ages (just before the
Renaissance)
 spreading the knowledge from the East
MEDIEVAL MATHEMATICIANS
 Adelard of Bath, Herman of Carinthia, Gerard of
Cermona –translated Euclid’s “Elements”
 Robert of Chester –translated Al- Khwarizmi’s book
into Latin
 Leonardo of Pisa (Fibonacci)- Europe’s first great
medieval mathematician
-Hindu-Arabic numeral system (Liber Abaci, 1202 AD)
-horizontal bar notation for fractions
-first recursive number sequence
-Liber Quadratorum, 1225 AD
Woman teaching geometry

 The frontispiece of an
Adelard of Bath Latin
translation of
Euclid's Elements, the
oldest surviving Latin
translation of the
Elements is a 12th-
century translation by
Adelard from an Arabic
version.
MEDIEVAL MATHEMATICIANS
 Nicole Oresme – used a system of rectangular
coordinates
-harmonical series is a divergent infinite series
 Johann Müller (Regiomontatus)- trigonometry
-De Triagulis, in 1450’s, first great book of
trigonometry
RENAISSANCE MATHEMATICS
 began in Italy
 From 14th to 16th century
 new way of thinking
 concept of ‘zero’
 many advancements in algebra
RENAISSANCE MATHEMATICIANS
 Leonardo da Vinci 
- exploration of the world of
proportionality and spatial
mechanics
- preferred drawing as his primary
tool to execute his studies
-eg: rhombicuboctahedron,
Leonardo's Vitruvian man's
perfect mathematical proportions
RENAISSANCE MATHEMATICIANS
 Albercht Durer- supermagic square

 Luca Pacioli- late 15th and early 16th centuries

- Summa de Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportioni et
Propotiionalita , 1494. – a book of arithmetic, geometry and
book-keeping
- symbols for plus and minus – standard notation
-The Divine Proportion
RENAISSANCE MATHEMATICIANS
 Niccolo Fontana Tartaglia- formula for solving
cubic equations, complex numbers
 Ludovico Ferrari- quadratic equations
 Gerolamo Cardano- Ars Magna,1545
-first systematic treatment of probability
 Rafael Bombelli –L’Algebra,1572 –imaginary numbers
 Simon Stevin- De Thiende, 1585- decimal notation