theory of equations

The theory of equations developed in China within that framework until the 13th century. The solution by radicals that Babylonian mathematicians had already explored has not been found in the Chinese texts that survive. However, the specific approach to equations that developed in China occurs from…

After the dramatic successes of Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia and Lodovico Ferrari in the 16th century, the theory of equations developed slowly, as problems resisted solution by known techniques. In the later 18th century the subject experienced an infusion of new ideas. Interest…

…of numbers and the transformed theory of equations had focused attention on abstract structures in mathematics. Questions that had been raised about numbers since Babylonian times turned out to be best cast theoretically in terms of entirely modern creations whose independence from the physical world was beyond dispute. Finally, geometry,…

…to the development of the theory of equations.

His contribution to the theory of equations is De aequationum recognitione et emendatione (1615; “Concerning the Recognition and Emendation of Equations”), in which he presented methods for solving equations of second, third, and fourth degree. He knew the connection between the positive roots of an equation (which, in his…