|
Shulba Sutras
The ''Shulva Sutras'' or ''Śulbasūtras'' (Sanskrit: शुल्बसूत्र; ': "string, cord, rope") are sutra texts belonging to the Śrauta ritual and containing geometry related to vedi (altar), fire-altar construction. Purpose and origins The Shulba Sutras are part of the larger corpus of texts called the Kalpa (Vedanga), Shrauta Sutras, considered to be appendices to the Vedas. They are the only sources of knowledge of Indian mathematics from the Vedic period. Unique Vedi (altar), Vedi (fire-altar) shapes were associated with unique gifts from the Gods. For instance, "he who desires heaven is to construct a fire-altar in the form of a falcon"; "a fire-altar in the form of a tortoise is to be constructed by one desiring to win the world of Brahman" and "those who wish to destroy existing and future enemies should construct a fire-altar in the form of a rhombus"., p. 387, "Certain shapes and sizes of fire-altars were associated with particular gifts that the sacrif ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural diffusion, diffused there from the northwest in the late Bronze Age#South Asia, Bronze Age. Sanskrit is the sacred language of Hinduism, the language of classical Hindu philosophy, and of historical texts of Buddhism and Jainism. It was a lingua franca, link language in ancient and medieval South Asia, and upon transmission of Hindu and Buddhist culture to Southeast Asia, East Asia and Central Asia in the early medieval era, it became a language of religion and high culture, and of the political elites in some of these regions. As a result, Sanskrit had a lasting effect on the languages of South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia, especially in their formal and learned vocabularies. Sanskrit generally connotes several Indo-Aryan languages# ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frits Staal
Johan Frederik "Frits" Staal (3 November 1930 – 19 February 2012) was the department founder and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and South/Southeast Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Staal specialized in the study of Vedic ritual and mantras, and the scientific exploration of ritual and mysticism. He was also a scholar of Greek and Indian logic and philosophy and Sanskrit grammar. Biography Staal was born in Amsterdam, the son of the architect Jan Frederik Staal. In 1954, Staal earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Amsterdam focused in mathematics, physics, and philosophy. In 1957, he earned his doctorate from the University of Madras focused on Indian philosophy and Sanskrit. After earning his doctorate, he served as a lecturer in Sanskrit at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London from 1958 to 1962. From 1961 to 1962, he searched as an Assistant and Associate Professor of Indian Philosophy at the University o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sumer
Sumer () is the earliest known civilization, located in the historical region of southern Mesopotamia (now south-central Iraq), emerging during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age, early Bronze Ages between the sixth and fifth millennium BC. Like nearby Elam, it is one of the Cradle of civilization, cradles of civilization, along with ancient Egypt, Egypt, the Indus Valley Civilisation, Indus Valley, the Erligang culture of the Yellow River valley, Caral-Supe civilization, Caral-Supe, and Mesoamerica. Living along the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, Sumerian farmers grew an abundance of grain and other crops, a surplus of which enabled them to form urban settlements. The world's earliest known texts come from the Sumerian cities of Uruk and Jemdet Nasr, and date to between , following a period of proto-writing . Name The term "Sumer" () comes from the Akkadian Empire, Akkadian name for the "Sumerians", the ancient non-Semitic languages, Semitic-speaking inhabitan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Abraham Seidenberg
Abraham Seidenberg (June 2, 1916 – May 3, 1988) was an American mathematician. Early life Seidenberg was born on June 2, 1916, to Harry and Fannie Seidenberg in Washington D.C. He graduated with a B.A. from the University of Maryland in 1937. He completed his Ph.D. in mathematics from Johns Hopkins University in 1943. His Ph.D. thesis, written under the direction of Oscar Zariski, was on ''Valuation Ideals in Rings of Polynomials in Two Variables''. Academic career Seidenberg became an instructor in mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1945. He reached the rank of full professor in 1958. He retired from Berkeley in 1987. Contributions Seidenberg was known for his research in commutative algebra, algebraic geometry, differential algebra, and the history of mathematics. He published ''Prime ideals and integral dependence'' written jointly with Irvin Cohen, which greatly simplified the existing proofs of the going-up and going-down theorems of ideal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plimpton 322
Plimpton 322 is a Babylonian clay tablet, believed to have been written around 1800 BC, that contains a mathematical table written in cuneiform script. Each row of the table relates to a Pythagorean triple, that is, a triple of integers (s,\ell,d) that satisfies the Pythagorean theorem, s^2+\ell^2=d^2, the rule that equates the sum of the squares of the legs of a right triangle to the square of the hypotenuse. The era in which Plimpton 322 was written was roughly 13 to 15 centuries prior to the era in which the major Greek discoveries in geometry were made. At the time that Otto Neugebauer and Abraham Sachs first realized the mathematical significance of the tablet in the 1940s, a few Old Babylonian tablets making use of the Pythagorean rule were already known. In addition to providing further evidence that Mesopotamian scribes knew and used the rule, Plimpton 322 strongly suggested that they had a systematic method for generating Pythagorean triples as some of the tripl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
First Babylonian Dynasty
The Old Babylonian Empire, or First Babylonian Empire, is dated to , and comes after the end of Sumerian power with the destruction of the Third Dynasty of Ur, and the subsequent Isin-Larsa period. The Chronology of the Ancient Near East, chronology of the first dynasty of Babylonia is debated; there is a Babylonian King List A and also a Babylonian King List B, with generally longer regnal lengths. In this chronology, the regnal years of List A are used due to their wide usage. Hardship of searching for origins of the First Dynasty The origins of the First Babylonian dynasty are hard to pinpoint because Babylon itself yields few archaeological materials intact due to a high water table. The evidence that survived throughout the years includes written records such as royal and votive inscriptions, literary texts, and lists of year-names. The minimal amount of evidence in economic and legal documents makes it difficult to illustrate the economic and social history of the First Ba ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carl Benjamin Boyer
Carl Benjamin Boyer (November 3, 1906 – April 26, 1976) was an American historian of sciences, and especially mathematics. Novelist David Foster Wallace called him the "Gibbon of math history". It has been written that he was one of few historians of mathematics of his time to "keep open links with contemporary history of science." Life and career Boyer was valedictorian of his high school class. He received a B.A. from Columbia College in 1928 and an M.A. in 1929. He received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Columbia University in 1939. He was a full professor of Mathematics at the City University of New York's Brooklyn College from 1952 until his death, although he had begun tutoring and teaching at Brooklyn College in 1928. Along with Carolyn Eisele of CUNY's Hunter College; C. Doris Hellman of the Pratt Institute, and later CUNY's Queens College; and Lynn Thorndike of Columbia University, Boyer was instrumental in the 1953 founding of the Metropolitan New York Sectio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bartel Leendert Van Der Waerden
Bartel Leendert van der Waerden (; 2 February 1903 – 12 January 1996) was a Dutch mathematician and historian of mathematics. Biography Education and early career Van der Waerden learned advanced mathematics at the University of Amsterdam and the University of Göttingen, from 1919 until 1926. He was much influenced by Emmy Noether at Göttingen, Germany. Amsterdam awarded him a Ph.D. for a thesis on algebraic geometry, supervised by Hendrick de Vries. Göttingen awarded him the habilitation in 1928. In that year, at the age of 25, he accepted a professorship at the University of Groningen. At 27, Van der Waerden published his '' Moderne Algebra'', an influential two-volume treatise on abstract algebra, still cited, and perhaps the first treatise to treat the subject as a comprehensive whole. This work systematized an ample body of research by Emmy Noether, David Hilbert, Richard Dedekind, and Emil Artin. In the following year, 1931, he was appointed professor at the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Radha Charan Gupta
Radha Charan Gupta (14 August 1935 – 5 September 2024) was an Indian historian of mathematics, specialising in the history of Indian mathematics. Life and career Gupta was born on 14 August 1935 in Jhansi, in what is now Uttar Pradesh. He attended secondary school in Jhansi, but there were few opportunities locally to pursue higher education, so he continued his education at the University of Lucknow with a merit scholarship. He married Savitri Devi in 1953, urged by his family to marry young so the dowry received could help pay his sister's dowry. He completed his bachelor's degree in 1955 and his master's degree in 1957. To support his family, Gupta took a teaching job instead of immediately continuing doctoral studies. He was a lecturer at Lucknow Christian College from 1957 to 1958. In 1958 he joined Birla Institute of Technology (BIT) in Ranchi. In 1963 he read Datta and Singh's '' History of Hindu Mathematics'', became interested in the history of mathematics, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Taittiriya Samhita
The ''Taittirīya Shakha'' (Sanskrit, loosely meaning 'Branch or School of the sage Tittiri'), is a ''shakha'' (i.e. 'branch', 'school', or rescension) of the Krishna (black) Yajurveda. The Taittiriyas are themselves divided into numerous sub-schools. Among these, the followers of Baudhayana and Apastamba were found all over South India (including Maharashtra), while the Hiranyakeshins were found mainly in Konkan and Western Maharashtra. The Vaikhanasas have a more eastern presence- around Tirupati and Chennai. The Vadhulas are present currently in Kerala and earlier in adjacent parts of Tamil Nadu. The Agniveshyas, a subdivision of the Vadhula immigrants from Malabar, are found around Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu. The Apastamba, Hiranyakeshin, Vaikhanasa and Baudhayana schools have survived with all their texts intact, it consists of the ''Taittirīya Samhita'' ('TS'), ''Taittirīya Brahmana'' ('TB'), ''Taittirīya Aranyaka'' ('TA'), and ''Taittirīya Pratisakhya'' ('TP'). No ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
