Nicolas Chuquet (1445 - 1488)

Nicolas Chuquet

Nicolas Chuquet was a 15th century French mathematician.

The exact dates of birth and death of this scientist are not known, nor are the places of birth. Chuquet received a Bachelor of Medicine degree from the University of Paris, went to Italy in the early 1470s, and around 1480 moved to Lyon, where he worked as a physician, mathematics teacher, and scribe. He is also known to have translated Latin works into French.

In 1484 he wrote his major algebraic work, the treatise Le Triparty en la Science des Nombres (The Science of Numbers in Three Parts), now considered one of the most original mathematical texts of the 15th century. At the time, arithmeticians lacked even the most basic notations for addition subtraction, multiplication, and division. Chuquet was one of the first to propose these symbols; he also introduced the names of large numbers into common use: billion, trillion, etc. In addition to general arithmetic and rules for calculating roots, the treatise contains a doctrine of equations and a collection of problems.

This treatise was published only in 1880, but the works of Nicolas Chuquet had a significant influence on the development of algebra, and they were consistently supplemented and expanded by scientists of the following generations.