13-02-2015
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RHTDM
KALKI is offline
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Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: I own a tent, it has a hole in it.
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David Mumford
David Mumford, the eminent mathematician writes in his review of the book, Mathematics in India by Kim Plofker:
"Did you know that Vedic priests were using the so-called Pythagorean theorem to construct their fire altars in 800 BCE?; that the differential equation for the sine function, infinite difference form, was described by Indian mathematician-astronomers in the fifth century CE?; and that 'Gregory's' series PI/4 = 1 -1/3+1/3-… was proven using the power series for arctangent and, with ingenious summation methods, used to accurately compute PI in southwest India in the fourteenth century?
(source: Mathematics in India - Reviewed by David Mumford - AMS American Mathematical Society - Volume 57 Number 3).
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