Michael Stifel

Michael Stifel (1487 to 1567) was a German Augustinian monk, early follower of Martin Luther and mathematician, born in Esslingen am Neckar. Ordained a priest in 1511, he became a Lutheran minister, served at Lochau and Holzdorf, and in 1558 became the first professor of mathematics at the newly founded University of Jena. He is remembered for his notation and algebra rather than his theology, although he also drew notoriety for a numerological prediction that the world would end in October 1533, which gave German the saying to calculate a Stiefel. His major work, Arithmetica integra of 1544, used multiplication by juxtaposition, introduced the term exponent, gave rules for combining powers, and printed a table of integers beside powers of two that some regard as an early logarithmic table. Stifel treated negative numbers as ordinary numbers, discussed irrational numbers, described a unified rule for solving quadratic equations, and set out a method of finding higher roots with binomial coefficients.