How Did Diophantus Contribute To Algebra

Brenda Rojas

Mrs. Gadia

Math 1414

4/18/17

Diophantus of Alexandria

The literal definition of algebra states, “the part of mathematics in which letters and other general symbols are used to represent numbers and quantities in formulae and equations”. But to a Greek mathematician, named Diophantus of Alexandria, algebra was much more. To Diophantus, algebra was a beloved hobby, it was his life. Throughout his lifespan of approximately 84 years, he made many contributions to the subject. He became a well-known mathematician many of us have probably never heard of, but thanks to him, his studies and discoveries, many advances have been made in all aspects of life. To this day, people all over the world use his methods daily. Although little

The most details we have of Diophantus's life (and these may be totally fictitious) come from the Greek Anthology, compiled by Metrodorus around 500 AD. A riddle was discovered on his grave after his death that read, “Here lies Diophantus, ‘the wonder behold. Through art algebraic, stone tells how old: ’God gave him his boyhood one-sixth of his life, one twelfth more as youth while whiskers grew rife; and then yet one-seventh ere marriage begun; in five years, there came a bouncing new son. Alas, the dear child of master and sage after attaining half the measure of his father’s life chill fate too him. After consoling his fate by the science of numbers for four years, has ended his life.” From the riddle, many mathematicians, researchers, and riddle lovers can conclude he married at the age of 26 and had only one son who died at the age of 42, which makes four years before Diophantus himself died. Based on this information we have given him a life span of approximately 84 years. Many critics have studied his riddles and still do now and everyone has had different opinions about them. That’s part of what makes them so special, they’re open to

It is believed that his proofs were found in his now lost Porisms, a collection of lemmas that probably were not in a separate book but were part of the Arithmetic. Something well used in algebra and in all the other maths would be variables. Well, Diophantus had something to do with that you see, Diophantus employed a symbol to represent the unknown quantity in his equations, but as he had only one symbol he could not use more than one unknown at a time which is where we would associate it to (most commonly) variable x or y. In fact, François Viète, influenced by Diophantus unknown quantity method, introduced symbolic algebra into Europe in the 16th century when he used letters to represent both constants and variables. There was an equation named after him called Diophantine analysis or Diophantine equation, which is closely related to algebraic geometry. Diophantine equation is a polynomial equation, usually in two or more unknowns, such that only the integer solutions are sought or studied (an integer solution is a solution such that all the unknowns take integer values). A linear Diophantine equation is an equation between two sums of monomials of degree zero or one. An exponential Diophantine equation is one in which exponents on terms can be unknowns. Diophantus was the first mathematician to introduce symbolism to algebra making it possible to solve many types of equations today. The Chinese reminder theorem was