Part III: The Medieval World
The Islamic Golden Age, Indian innovations, and the reawakening of European mathematics through cultural exchange.
Overview
While Europe entered the early Middle Ages, mathematical innovation flourished in the Islamic world and the Indian subcontinent. Al-Khwarizmi founded algebra as a systematic discipline. Indian mathematicians developed the decimal system that the world uses today. Fibonacci brought these ideas to Europe in 1202. And in Kerala, mathematicians discovered infinite series for trigonometric functions — centuries before the European development of calculus.
Chapters
Chapter 7: Al-Khwarizmi & Islamic Algebra
Al-Jabr wa'l-Muqabala, the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, Omar Khayyam's geometric solutions to cubics, and the transmission of Indian numerals.
Chapter 8: Fibonacci & Medieval Europe
Liber Abaci and the introduction of Hindu-Arabic numerals, the Fibonacci sequence, and the slow mathematical awakening of medieval Europe.
Chapter 9: Brahmagupta to the Kerala School
Brahmagupta's rules for zero and negatives, Bhaskara II's Lilavati, and the Kerala school's series expansions for sine, cosine, and arctangent.