Mahāvīra (mathematician)

Mahāvīra, also called Mahaviracharya, was a ninth-century Indian Jain mathematician, possibly born in Mysore. In 850 CE he wrote the Gaṇita-sāra-saṅgraha, the Compendium on the gist of Mathematics, which is described as the earliest Indian text devoted entirely to mathematics. He was patronised by the Rashtrakuta emperor Amoghavarsha and separated astrology from mathematics. His book treats the subjects that Aryabhata and Brahmagupta had argued over, but sets them out more clearly, with a highly syncopated approach to algebra. He gave terminology for the equilateral and isosceles triangle, the rhombus, the circle and the semicircle, found a formula for combinations, approximated the area and perimeter of ellipses, and gave rules for writing a fraction as a sum of unit fractions. He held that the square root of a negative number does not exist, and wrongly held that a number divided by zero stays unchanged. His work was later translated into Telugu.