Definition:Determinant/Matrix/Historical Note
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Historical Note on Determinant of Matrix
The theory of determinants was the first topic in linear algebra to be studied in any depth.
It was initiated by Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz in $1696$, then further developed by Étienne Bézout, Alexandre-Théophile Vandermonde, Gabriel Cramer, Joseph Louis Lagrange and Pierre-Simon de Laplace.
It was advanced significantly in the first half of the $19$th century by Augustin Louis Cauchy, Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi and James Joseph Sylvester, who between them put them into the form with which we are now familiar.
The word determinant itself first appeared in Disquisitiones Arithmeticae by Carl Friedrich Gauss in $1801$.
Sources
- 1955: L. Mirsky: An Introduction to Linear Algebra ... (next): Chapter $\text I$: Determinants
- 1992: George F. Simmons: Calculus Gems ... (previous) ... (next): Chapter $\text {A}.26$: Cauchy ($\text {1789}$ – $\text {1857}$)