Nicolas Chuquet
| Nicolas Chuquet | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1445 or c. 1455 Paris, France |
| Died | 1488 or c. 1500 Lyon, France |
| Nationality | French |
| Education | Bachelors degree in medicine |
| Occupation | Mathematician |
| Title | Nicolas chuquet |
Nicolas Chuquet (French: [ʃykɛ]; 1445, but some sources say c. 1455, Paris, France – 1488, some sources say c. 1500, Lyon, France) was a French mathematician. He invented his own notation for algebraic concepts and exponentiation. He may have been the first mathematician to recognize zero and negative numbers as exponents .
In 1475, Jehan Adam recorded the words "bymillion" and "trimillion" (for 1012 and 1018) and it is believed that these words or similar ones were in general use at that time.
In 1484, Chuquet wrote an article Triparty en la science des nombres, which was unpublished in his lifetime. Most of it, however, was copied without attribution by Estienne de La Roche in his 1520 textbook, l'Arismetique. In the 1870s, scholar Aristide Marre discovered Chuquet's manuscript and published it in 1880. The manuscript contained notes in de la Roche's handwriting. His article shows a huge number divided into groups of six digits, and in a short passage he states that the groups can be called:
In a second passage, he wrote:
The extract from Chuquet's manuscript, the transcription and translation provided here all contain an original mistake: one too many zeros in the 804300 portion of the fully written out example: 745324'8043000 '700023'654321 ...
Chuquet was, however, the original author of the earliest work using of a systematic, extended series of names ending in -illion or -yllion. The system in which the names million, billion, trillion, etc. refer to powers of one million is sometimes referred to as the Chuquet system.
In 1514, Budaeus introduced the term Milliard or Milliart for 1012, which was widely publicised around 1550 by the influential Jacques Peletier du Mans. Milliard was reduced to 109 around the end of the 17th century, leaving the modern Long scale system. This system is sometimes referred to as the Chuquet-Peletier system.
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