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Minggatu (
Minggatu (Mongolian script
The classical or traditional Mongolian script, also known as the , was the first writing system created specifically for the Mongolian language, and was the most widespread until the introduction of Cyrillic in 1946. It is traditionally written ...
: ; , c.1692-c. 1763), full name Sharavyn Myangat ( mn, Шаравын Мянгат), also known as Ming Antu was a Chinese Mongolian astronomer
An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, moons, comets and galaxies – in either ...
, mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems.
Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change.
History
On ...
, and topographic scientist at the Qing court
The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speak ...
. His courtesy name
A courtesy name (), also known as a style name, is a name bestowed upon one at adulthood in addition to one's given name. This practice is a tradition in the East Asian cultural sphere, including China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.Ulrich Theob ...
was Jing An (静安).
Minggatu was born in Plain White Banner
The Plain White Banner () was one of the Eight Banners of Manchu military and society during the Later Jin and Qing dynasty of China. It was one of the three "upper" banners (Plain Yellow Banner, Bordered Yellow Banner, and Plain White Banner) dir ...
(now Plain and Bordered White Banner, Xilin Gol League
Xilingol, Xilin Gol, Shiliin Gol or Xilinguole Aimag/League (; mn, , , , ) is one of 3 leagues of Inner Mongolia. The seat is Xilinhot, and the area is . The league's economy is based on mining and agriculture.
Xilingol borders Mongolia to t ...
, Inner Mongolia) of the Qing Empire. He was of the Sharaid clan. His name first appeared in official Chinese records in 1713, among the Kangxi Emperor
The Kangxi Emperor (4 May 1654– 20 December 1722), also known by his temple name Emperor Shengzu of Qing, born Xuanye, was the third emperor of the Qing dynasty, and the second Qing emperor to rule over China proper, reigning from 1661 to ...
's retinue, as a ''shengyuan'' (state-subsidized student) of the Imperial Astronomical Bureau. He worked there at a time when Jesuit missionaries were in charge of calendar reforms. He also participated in the work of compiling and editing three very important books in astronomy and joined the team of China's area measurement.
From 1724 up to 1759, he worked at the Imperial Observatory. He participated in drafting and editing the calendar and the study of the armillary sphere.
His seminal work '' The Quick Method for Obtaining the Precise Ratio of Division of a Circle'' (), which was completed after his death by his son Mingshin, and students (among them his most gifted pupil Chen Jihin and an intendant in the minister of finance, Zhang), was a significant contribution to the development of mathematics in China.
He was the first person in China who calculated infinite series
In mathematics, a series is, roughly speaking, a description of the operation of adding infinitely many quantities, one after the other, to a given starting quantity. The study of series is a major part of calculus and its generalization, math ...
and obtained more than 10 formulae. In the 1730s, he first established and used what was later to be known as Catalan number
In combinatorial mathematics, the Catalan numbers are a sequence of natural numbers that occur in various counting problems, often involving recursively defined objects. They are named after the French-Belgian mathematician Eugène Charles Ca ...
s. The Jesuit missionaries' influence can be seen by many traces of European mathematics in his works, including the use of Euclidean notions of continuous proportions, series addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, series reversion, and the binomial theorem. Minggatu's work is remarkable in that expansions in series, trigonometric and logarithmic were apprehended algebraically and inductively without the aid of differential and integral calculus.
In 1742 he participated in the revision of the ''Compendium of Observational and Computational Astronomy''. In 1756, he participated in the surveying of the Dzungar Khanate
The Dzungar Khanate, also written as the Zunghar Khanate, was an Inner Asian khanate of Oirat Mongol origin. At its greatest extent, it covered an area from southern Siberia in the north to present-day Kyrgyzstan in the south, and from t ...
(renamed Xinjiang
Xinjiang, SASM/GNC: ''Xinjang''; zh, c=, p=Xīnjiāng; formerly romanized as Sinkiang (, ), officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC), located in the northwest ...
), which was incorporated into the Qing Empire by the Qianlong Emperor. It was due to his geographical surveys in Xinjiang that the Complete Atlas of the Empire (the first atlas of China drawn with scientific methods) was finished.
From 1760 to 1763, shortly before his death, he was administrator of the Imperial Astronomical Bureau.
Later recognition
In 1910, Japanese mathematicianYoshio Mikami
was a Japanese mathematician and historian of '' Japanese mathematics''. He was born February 16, 1875, in Kotachi, Hiroshima prefecture. He attended the High School of Tohoku University, and in 1911 was admitted to the Imperial University of To ...
mentioned that Minggatu was the first Mongolian who had ever entered into the field of analytical research methods.
Mathematician Dr. P. J. Larcombe of Derby University published 7 papers on Minggatu and his work in 1999, including the stimulus of Jesuit missionary, engineer, mathematician and geographer Pierre Jartoux, who brought three infinite series to China early in the 1700s.
On May 26, 2002, the minor planet 28242 was named after Minggatu as 28242 Mingantu. The nomination ceremony and traditional meeting were held in Minggatu's hometown in August 2002. More than 500 delegates and 20,000 local residents gathered together to celebrate and a conference on "The Science Contribution of Ming Antu" was held. The Chinese government named Ming’s hometown as "Ming Antu Town".
See also
* Ming Antu's infinite series expansion of trigonometric functionsReferences