In 1202, a 32-year old Italian finished one of the most influential books of all time, which introduced modern arithmetic to Western Europe. Devised in India in the seventh and eighth centuries and brought to North Africa by Muslim traders, the Hindu-Arabic system helped transform the West into the dominant force in science, technology, and commerce, leaving behind Muslim cultures which had long known it but had failed to see its potential. The young Italian, Leonardo of Pisa (better known today as Fibonacci), had learned the Hindu number system when he traveled to North Africa with his father, a customs agent. The book he created was Liber abbaci, the 'Book of Calculation', and the revolution that followed its publication was enormous. Arithmetic made it possible for ordinary people to buy and sell goods, convert currencies, and keep accurate records of possessions more readily than ever before. Liber abbaci's publication led directly to large-scale international commerce and the scientific revolution of the Renaissance. Yet despite the ubiquity of his discoveries, Leonardo of Pisa remains an enigma. His name is best known today in association with an exercise in Liber abbaci whose solution gives rise to a sequence of numbers - the Fibonacci sequence - used by some to predict the rise and fall of financial markets, and evident in myriad biological structures. In The Man of Numbers, Keith Devlin recreates the life and enduring legacy of an overlooked genius, and in the process makes clear how central numbers and mathematics are to our daily lives.

The man of numbers : Fibonacci's arithmetic revolution

The purpose of this article is to investigate the genesis and growth of a historical canard that can be encountered in numerous popular as well as some scholarly publications devoted to the history...

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Medieval Europe’s satanic ciphers: on the genesis of a modern myth

A compelling firsthand account of Keith Devlin's ten-year quest to tell Fibonacci's story In 2000, Keith Devlin set out to research the life and legacy of the medieval mathematician Leonardo of Pisa, popularly known as Fibonacci, whose book Liber abbaci has quite literally affected the lives of everyone alive today. Although he is most famous for the Fibonacci numbers—which, it so happens, he didn't invent—Fibonacci's greatest contribution was as an expositor of mathematical ideas at a level ordinary people could understand. In 1202, Liber abbaci—the "Book of Calculation"—introduced modern arithmetic to the Western world. Yet Fibonacci was long forgotten after his death, and it was not until the 1960s that his true achievements were finally recognized. Finding Fibonacci is Devlin's compelling firsthand account of his ten-year quest to tell Fibonacci's story. Devlin, a math expositor himself, kept a diary of the undertaking, which he draws on here to describe the project's highs and lows, its false starts and disappointments, the tragedies and unexpected turns, some hilarious episodes, and the occasional lucky breaks. You will also meet the unique individuals Devlin encountered along the way, people who, each for their own reasons, became fascinated by Fibonacci, from the Yale professor who traced modern finance back to Fibonacci to the Italian historian who made the crucial archival discovery that brought together all the threads of Fibonacci's astonishing story. Fibonacci helped to revive the West as the cradle of science, technology, and commerce, yet he vanished from the pages of history. This is Devlin's search to find him.

Finding Fibonacci: The Quest to Rediscover the Forgotten Mathematical Genius Who Changed the World

The paper contributes to the literature focusing on the role of ideas, practices and human capital in pre-modern European economic development. It argues that studying the spread of Hindu-Arabic numerals among European practitioners allows to open up a perspective on a progressive transmission of useful knowledge from the commercial revolution to the early modern period. The analysis is based on an original database recording detailed information on over 1200 texts, both manuscript and printed. This database provides the most detailed reconstruction available of the European tradition of practical arithmetic from the late 13th to the end of the 16th century. It can be argued that this is the tradition which drove the adoption of Hindu-Arabic numerals in Europe. The dataset is analysed with statistical and spatial tools. Since the spread of these texts is grounded on inland patterns, the evidence suggests that a continuous transmission of useful knowledge may have played a role during the shift of the core of European trade from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic.

Figuring out: the spread of Hindu-Arabic numerals in the European tradition of practical mathematics (13th-16th centuries)

The paper focusses on the spread of Hindu-Arabic arithmetic among European practitioners. The analysis is based on an original database recording detailed information on over 1200 practical arithmetic manuals, both manuscript and printed. This database provides the most detailed reconstruction available of the European tradition of practical arithmetic from the late 13th to the end of the 16th century. The paper argues that studying this spread makes it possible to open a perspective on a progressive transmission of ‘useful knowledge’ from the ‘commercial revolution’ to the ‘little divergence’. Focussing on the transmission of practical arithmetic allows to stress the role of skills and human capital in pre-modern European economic development. Moreover, it allows to reconstruct a progressive transmission, from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, of a ‘practical knowledge’ which eventually contributed to major developments in European ‘theoretical knowledge’

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Raffaella Franci

Papers

Leonardo Pisano e la trattatistica dell'abaco in Italia nei secoli XIV e XV.

Una soluzione esatta del problema delle parti in un manoscritto della prima metà del quattrocento