Mathematician:Nicolas Chuquet

Mathematician

French mathematician who first treated powers of unknowns systematically.

Inventor of the words billion for $10^{12}$, trillion for $10^{18}$, and so on.

Nationality

French

History

• Born: 1445 or c. 1455, Paris, France
• Died: 1488 or c. 1500, Lyon, France

Theorems and Definitions

• Chuquet-Peletier System (with Jacques Peletier du Mans)

Publications

• 1484: Triparty en la Science des Nombres (unpublished in his lifetime)

Sources

• John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson: "Nicolas Chuquet": MacTutor History of Mathematics archive

• 1992: David Wells: Curious and Interesting Puzzles ... (previous) ... (next): The Nuns in their Cells
• 1998: David Nelson: The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics (2nd ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): Chuquet, Nicolas (c.1440-c.1488)
• 2008: David Nelson: The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics (4th ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): Chuquet, Nicolas (c.1440-c.1488)
• 2008: Ian Stewart: Taming the Infinite ... (previous) ... (next): Chapter $4$: Lure of the Unknown: Algebraic symbolism