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Maths Project

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reuseuse120
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© © All Rights Reserved
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INTRODUCTION

Number theory (or arithmetic or higher arithmetic in older usage) is a branch of pure
mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the Integers and arithmetic functions.
German mathematician Carl Friedrich gauss (1777–1855) said, "Mathematics is the
queen of the sciences—and number theory is the queen of mathematics." Number
theorists study prime numbers as well as the properties of mathematical
objects constructed from integers (for example, rational numbers), or defined as
generalizations of the integers (for example, algebraic integers).
Integers can be considered either in themselves or as solutions to equations
(Diophantine geometry). Questions in number theory are often best understood through
the study of analytical objects (for example, the Riemann Zeta function) that encode
properties of the integers, primes or other number-theoretic objects in some fashion
(analytic number theory). One may also study real numbers in relation to rational
numbers, for example, as approximated by the latter (Diophantine approximation).
The older term for number theory is arithmetic. By the early twentieth century, it had
been superseded by "number theory". (The word "arithmetic" is used by the general
public to mean "elementary calculation"; it has also acquired other meanings
in mathematical logic, as in piano arithmetic, and computer science, as in floating point
arithmetic.) The use of the term arithmetic for number theory regained some ground in
the second half of the 20th century, arguably in part due to French influence In
particular, arithmetical is commonly preferred as an adjective to number-theoretic.
The earliest historical find of an arithmetical nature is a fragment of a table: the broken
clay tablet Plimpton 322 (Larsa Mesopotamia, ca. 1800 BC) contains a list of "Pythagorean
triples", that is, integers such that .The triples are too many and too large to have been
obtained by brute force. The heading over the first column reads: "The takiltum of the
diagonal which has been subtracted such that the width...
While Babylonian number theory—or what survives of Babylonian mathematics that can
be called thus—consists of this single, striking fragment, Babylonian algebra (in the
secondary-school sense of "algebra") was exceptionally well developed Late Neoplatonic
sources state that Pythagoras learned mathematics from the Babylonians. Much earlier
sources state that Thales and Pythagoras traveled and studied in Egypt. Euclid IX 21–34
is very probably Pythagorean; it is very simple material ("odd times even is even", "if an
odd number measures [= divides] an even number, then it also measures [= divides]
half of it"), but it is all that is needed to prove that is irrational .
Pythagorean Mystics gave great importance to the odd and the even. The discovery
that is irrational is credited to the early Pythagoreans (pre-Theodorus). By revealing (in
modern terms) that numbers could be irrational, this discovery seems to have provoked
the first foundational crisis in mathematical history; its proof or its divulgation are
sometimes credited to Hippasus, who was expelled or split from the Pythagorean
sect. This forced a distinction between numbers (integers and the rationals—the
subjects of arithmetic), on the one hand, and lengths and proportions (which we would
identify with real numbers, whether rational or not), on the other hand.
The Pythagorean tradition spoke also of so-called polygonal or figurate numbers.[15]
While square numbers, cubic numbers, etc., are seen now as more natural than
triangular numbers, pentagonal numbers, etc., the study of the sums of triangular and
pentagonal numbers would prove fruitful in the early modern period (17th to early 19th
centuries).
We know of no clearly arithmetical material in ancient Egyptian or Vedic sources, though
there is some algebra in each. The Chinese remainder theorem appears as an
exercise in Sunzi suanjing (3rd, 4th or 5th century CE). (There is one important step
glossed over in Sunzi's solution: it is the problem that was later solved
by Aryabhattas Kuttaka – see below.) The result was later generalized with a complete
solution called Da-yan-shu (大衍術) in Qin Jiusho 1247 Mathematical treatise in nine
sections which was translated into English in early 19th century by British
missionary Alexander Wylie.
There is also some numerical mysticism in Chinese mathematics,[note 5] but, unlike
that of the Pythagoreans, it seems to have led nowhere.
Classical Greece and the early Hellenistic period
Further information: Ancient Greek mathematics
Aside from a few fragments, the mathematics of Classical Greece is known to us either
through the reports of contemporary non-mathematicians or through mathematical
works from the early Hellenistic period.[20] In the case of number theory, this means, by
and large, Plato and Euclid, respectively.

While Asian mathematics influenced Greek and Hellenistic learning, it seems to be the
case that Greek mathematics is also an indigenous tradition.
In 1773, Lessing published an epigram he had found in a manuscript during his work as
a librarian; it claimed to be a letter sent by Archimedes to Eratosthenes.[24][25] The
epigram proposed what has become known as Archimedes’s cattle problem; its solution
(absent from the manuscript) requires solving an indeterminate quadratic equation
(which reduces to what would later be misnamed Pell’s equation). As far as we know,
such equations were first successfully treated by the Indian school. It is not known
whether Archimedes himself had a method of solution.

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