History of diophantus biography books

Diophantus, often known as the 'father of algebra', is best known for his Arithmetica, a work on the solution of algebraic equations and on the theory of numbers.

However, essentially nothing is known of his life and there has been much debate regarding the date at which he lived.

There are a few limits which can be put on the dates of Diophantus's life.

History of diophantus biography books pdf

On the one hand Diophantus quotes the definition of a polygonal number from the work of Hypsicles so he must have written this later than 150 BC. On the other hand Theon of Alexandria, the father of Hypatia, quotes one of Diophantus's definitions so this means that Diophantus wrote no later than 350 AD.

However this leaves a span of 500 years, so we have not narrowed down Diophantus's dates a great deal by these pieces of information.

There is another piece of information which was accepted for many years as giving fairly accurate dates.

Heath[3] quotes from a letter by Michael Psellus who lived in