If there ever can be a story of how trade helped the growth of Mathematics, it would be the Chinese context. When the erstwhile behemoth of Mathematics, Greece began to weaken during the last centuries of BC, the flourishing trade empire of China allowed its mathematicians to take the field to ever-greater heights. Chinese history spans over three millennia, and when speaking of the contributions of Chinese Mathematicians, it is necessary to take into account modern-day Vietnam, Korea, Japan, and China as a whole.
Here are some of the best mathematicians from China who contributed vastly through their intellect to this prestigious field.
- Jing Fang (78 BC – 37 BC): Recorded to be born with the name Li Fang, he was a music theorist, mathematician, and astrologer at the same time. He was the advocate of the theory that the moonlight as seen from earth is a reflection of Sun. In ancient China, it was known as “Radiating Influence”. He introduced music theory too when he noticed how closely the 53 just fifths approximated 31 Octaves. He extended it to scale composed in 60 fifths and had very less difference when compared it to the calculated tones. It is remarkable to note that it would have required 26 digits of accuracy for exact calculation. However, Jing by rounding it to six digits got his calculation as near to accuracy. It was not until the 17th century that relative values of successive tone would be calculated precisely.
2. Liu Xin (53 BC – 23 AD): Liu was a Chinese astronomer and a curator of the imperial library. His significant achievement was establishing the world’s first library classification system and the first book notation system. During his time, the library catalogue was written on scrolls of fine silk and stored in silk bags. Liu Xin both catalogued and annotated or edited ancient texts.
3. Zhang Heng (AD 78 – AD 139): Chang Heng, was a Chinese polymathic scientist and statesman from Nanyang. He studied in the capital cities of Luoyang. Chang wore many caps with excellence. He was a successful mathematician, astronomer, seismologist, inventor, hydraulic engineer, inventor, geographer, cartographer, ethnographer, artist, poet, philosopher, politician, and literary scholar. He started his career as a minor civil servant and got promoted as a Chief Astronomer, Prefect of the Majors for Official Carriages, and then Palace Attendant at the imperial court. Zhang’s practical application of knowledge into mechanics and gears led to several inventions. He invented the world’s first water-powered armillary sphere, improved the inflow water clock, and invented the world’s first seismoscope. He is also credited to have developed previous Chinese calculations for pi, documented about 2,500 stars in the star catalogue, and suggested theories about the Moon and its relationship to the Sun and the nature of solar and lunar eclipses.
4. Zhen Luan (AD 535 – AD 566): Zhen was a famous mathematician and astronomer. He was born in the Wuji County of the present-day Hubei Province. Zhen Luan was known for the comments on the ancient mathematical treatises. He paid particular attention to the Nine Palaces calculation technique; his description of the Luo Shu represents an early example of textual comment on this scheme. Zhen Luan developed the Tianhe calendar that was implemented in 566 and was current for the next 18 years.
5. Wang Xiaotong (AD580 – AD640): Also known as Wang Hs’iao-t’ung, was a brilliant mathematician, calendarist, politician, and writer in the early Tang dynasty. He became interested in mathematics at a young age. After a study of the Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art, Wang became a teacher of mathematics, and later deputy director of the Astronomical Bureau. He was famous for his book Jigu Suanjing (Continuation of Ancient Mathematics). It was considered one of the Ten Computational Canons.
6. Li Chunfeng ( AD 602 – AD 670): Born in today’s Baoji, Shaanxi province Li, was first appointed to the Imperial Astronomy Bureau to help institute a calendar reform during the Sui and Tang dynasties. He ultimately ascended as a deputy of the Imperial Astronomy Bureau and designed the Linde calendar. Li added corrections to particular mathematical works in the Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art. He validated that the least common multiple of the numbers two to twelve was 27720. Li gave the value of Pi better approximation instead of three.
7. Cheng Dawei (AD1533 –AD1606): One of the most illustrious Chinese arithmeticians was Cheng. Strangely he was not a professional mathematician. He learned about the subject from his extensive travels and through his avid collections of Mathematical books. Published in the year 1592 was his renowned book on General Source of Computational Methods. It is mainly general arithmetic for the abacus. It was republished several times and became widely popular. As remarked by a contemporary historian of Chinese mathematics: “Nowadays, various editions of the book can still be found in China and old people still recite the versified formulas and talk about the difficult problems in it.”
8. Zhu Zaiyu (AD1536 –AD1611): Zhu was born in Qinyang, Henan Province to an aristocratic family and was a prominent mathematician, physicist, choreographer, and musician of the late imperial time. He innovatively described the equal temperament via accurate mathematical calculation. Though Zhu inherited the title the Prince in 1593, he quickly resigned and gave it to his cousin. He instead focusses on delivering a set of ten musicological treatises to the court, establishing his scholarly merit. Zhu wrote the Three music theory, the book on the equal temperament, “A clear explanation of that which concerns the equal temperament”, and “Reflection on mathematics”. His work has been described by many as “the crowning achievement of two millennia of acoustical experiment and research”.
9. Qian Weichang (1912 – 2010): Also known as Chien Wei-Zang, was a physicist and an applied mathematician. He obtained a Ph.D. degree at the University of Toronto in 1942 and then worked as a research associate in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of Caltech. Qian was a specialist in applied mathematics, mechanics, physics, engineering science, and Chinese information processing. He was the founder of modern mechanics undertakings in China. His research was mostly in the areas of the fundamental theory of plates and shells, the analysis of large deflection of thin plates and shells, the study of corrugated pipes, mechanics of armor penetration, singular perturbation methods, variational principles, and generalized variational principles. His joint work with J. L. Synge on the fundamental theory of plates and shells is considered as a pioneering classical work in solid mechanics. His successive approximation method of treating massive deflection problem is now named as “Chien’s method”.
10. Wang Yuan (1930 – Present): Wang is a mathematician and writer well known for his contributions to Goldbach’s conjecture. Wang’s father was a magistrate in the local government. Due to the Second Sino Japanese war, the family fled from Zhejiang Province. Wang graduated from the Department of Mathematics in 1952. Wang’s career was interrupted due to the Cultural Revolution of 1966. He was much known for his research on the area of number theory. His work on the Goldbach conjecture, through sieve theory and the Hardy-Littlewood circle method, obtained a series of outstanding results in the field of number theory. He also developed high-dimensional combinatorial designs for numerical integration on the unit cube, which was later used for the design of experiments.
