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Ramanujan was largely self-taught, deriving independently some work of Gauss and Riemann. G. H. Hardy at Cambridge sponsored the brilliant young mathematician, whose notebooks of original discoveries are being published and are a source of inspiration to other mathematicians.
Born: 6 Oct 1552 in Macerata, Papal States (now Italy)
Matteo Ricci was born in Macerata, Italy in 1552. He entered the Jesuits and in 1583 he arrived in China. Ricci moved 1589 to Shao-chou in China and began to teach Chinese scholars the mathematical ideas that he had learnt from his teacher Clavius. This is perhaps the first time that European mathematics and Chinese mathematics had interacted and it must be seen as an important event. He became fluent in the Chinese language, and adoped Chinese dress and a Chinese name, Li Ma-teu. He studied Chinese science and mathematics, and made western science and mathematics available to Chinese scholars. introduced trigonometric and astronomical instruments, and translated the first six books of Euclid into Chinese. The Chinese geometrical works for which he is remembered were books on the astrolabe, the sphere, measures and isoperimetrics. But especially important was his Chinese version of the first six books of Euclid's Elements, which was written in collaboration with one of his pupils. Entitled A first textbook of geometry, this work assures Ricci an important place in the history of mathematics When he arrived in China he began to prepare a "Great Map of Ten Thousand Countries," a world map for China. In 1601 he moved to Beijing, and attended the court of Wan Li, and became the court mathematician. He published drafts of his map in 1584 and in 1600. The final version was made public in 1602.
Adam Riese (1489-1559) was the most famous and influential German arithmetician of the 16th century, and author of many popular commercial arithmetic books which made use of Indo-Arabic numerals instead of counters.
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