Leonardo of Pisa (Fibonacci) · Mathematics
How a Pisan merchant’s son who learned ‘the nine figures of the Indians’ and the sign for zero in a North African port wrote the book that taught Europe to calculate with place-value numerals, and why 0 to 9 beat Roman numerals for commerce and computation.
You learned that Fibonacci’s Liber Abaci (1202) introduced Europe to the ‘nine figures of the Indians’ plus the sign 0 ( zephir ), a place-value system he had learned in Bugia, and that this positional notation beat Roman numerals because it made written calculation possible. Explain in your own word…
Leads to Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi.
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