The number zero as we know it arrived in the West
circa 1200, most famously delivered by Italian
mathematician Fibonacci (aka Leonardo of Pisa),
who brought it, along with the rest of the Arabic
numerals, back from his travels to north Africa.
But the history of zero, both as a concept and a
number, stretches far deeper into historyso
deep, in fact, thhat its provenance is difficult to nail down.
"There are at least two discoveries, or
inventions, of zero," says Charles Seife, author
of Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea
(Viking, 2000). "The one that we got the zero
from came from the Fertile Crescent." It first
came to be between 400 and 300 B.C. in Babylon,
Seife says, before developing in India, wending
its way through northern Africa and, in
Fibonacci's hands, crossing into Europe via Italy.
Initially, zero functioned as a mere
placeholderâa way to tell 1 from 10 from 100,
to give an example using Arabic numerals. "That's
not a full zero," Seife says. "A full zero is a
number on its own; it's the average of 1 and 1."
<http://wwww.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=history-of-zero>Link
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Posted By johannes to
<http://www.monochrom.at/english/2009/08/origin-of-zero.htm>monochrom
at 8/21/2009 12:33:00 PM
