Chitrabhanu (; ) was a mathematician of the
Kerala school and a student of
Nilakantha Somayaji. He was a
Nambudiri brahmin from the town of Covvaram near present day
Trissur
Thrissur (), formerly Trichur, also known by its historical name Thrissivaperur, is a city and the headquarters of the Thrissur district in Kerala, India. It is the third largest urban agglomeration in Kerala after Kochi and Kozhikode, and t ...
. He is noted for a , a concise astronomical manual, dated to 1530, an
algebraic treatise, and a commentary on a poetic text.
Nilakantha The word Nilakantha may refer to:
* Shiva, one of the principal deities of Hinduism
* ''Nilakantha'' (spider), a genus of jumping spiders
* Neelakantha Chaturdhara (Nīlakaṇṭha Caturdhara), seventeenth-century commentator on the ''Mahābhārat ...
and he were both teachers of
Shankara Variyar.
Contributions
He gave integer solutions to 21 types of systems of two
simultaneous
Simultaneity may refer to:
* Relativity of simultaneity, a concept in special relativity.
* Simultaneity (music), more than one complete musical texture occurring at the same time, rather than in succession
* Simultaneity, a concept in Endogenei ...
Diophantine equations in two unknowns.
[.] These types are all the possible pairs of equations of the following seven forms:
[.]
For each case, Chitrabhanu gave an explanation and justification of his rule as well as an example. Some of his explanations are algebraic, while others are geometric.
References
Kerala school of astronomy and mathematics
15th-century births
16th-century deaths
16th-century Indian mathematicians
{{asia-mathematician-stub