Squamish math historian redefines origin of decimal point

The night he realized what he discovered, Squamish mathematics historian and professor Glen Van Brummelen ran up and down the halls of the dorm where he was staying to teach a math camp, looking for someone to tell his news, he told National Public Radio last month.While researching late medieval and early Renaissance astronomy in the summer of 2019, Van Brummelen noticed a surprising usage of a decimal point in an ancient table.

In Bianchini's time, astrology was serious business, unlike our less serious conception of astrology today—horoscopes in newspapers. Why the decimal point matters"The reason that decimal point and our decimal fractions are so important is that we can now use a single number system that can be used for surveying or for astrology or for calculating the price of our grocery bill," said Van Brummelen, whose paper on the discovery, Decimal fractional numeration and the decimal point in 15th-century Italy, was published online in February.

At the time of the discovery, he was working on translating documents from Latin with Darcy Otto, a fellow former Quest mathematics professor. "There aren't that many people who study medieval science," he said."And there are lots of manuscripts out there that haven't been read very carefully. It requires a rather unique collection of skills. And the one skill that I happened to luck into was both being able to read the Latin and understand the mathematics behind it; and to be able to work with the Latin, the astronomy, and the mathematics all at once. ...

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