Leonardo Fibonacci
In 1202 Leonardo Fibonacci published his Liber Abaci, the first thorough European exposition of the Hindu numerals, the zero, and the decimal system, by a Christian author. This book marked the rebirth of mathematics in Latin Christendom. The same work introduced Arabic algebra to Western Europe, and made a minor revolution in that field by occasionally using letters, instead of numbers, to generalize and abbreviate equations. He was a man ahead of his time; his contemporaries still preferred the cumbersome roman numerals and only scholars adopted this world-changing system. Not until the sixteenth century did the Hindu numerals finally replace the Roman.
Source: Durant, Will. The Story of Civilization, Vol. 4: The Age of Faith, A History of Medieval Civilization, Christian, Islamic, and Judaic, From Constantine to Dante, A.D. 325-1300. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1950.
Public Domain
Back to archive
Full disclosure, I may occasionally borrow a sentence from Will Durant's Story of Civilization. I absolutely love that collection!