An update on the 1st use of
ZERO.
Chinese Invented Number System: Singapore Researcher
A Singapore researcher has crushed the long-held belief that the Arabs and Indians invented the numeral system used today, according to a report carried by the Straits Times Thursday.
A retired National University of Singapore mathematics professor, Dr Lam, 66, told The Straits Times the universal system using the numbers one to nine - known as the Hindu-Arabic system - had its roots in the rod bundles used in China from as early as 475 BC.
The earliest known text on arithmetic based on the current number system was written by an Arab in AD 825, but the earliest Chinese treatise on the rod numerals and procedures for multiplication and division - the sun zi suanjing - was written about 425 years earlier.
When Dr Lam compared the procedures in both, she found, to her astonishment, that they were identical. 'They could not have developed the same systems by sheer coincidence,'
Lam Lay Yong
Award-winning authority on the history of Chinese mathematics
Internationally renowned for her research into the history of Chinese mathematics, Lam Lay Yong is the first woman, and the first person from Asia, to have won the prestigious
prize for her contribution to mathematics.
After 30 years of research, she laid to rest the long held belief that the Arabs and Indians invented the numeral system used today.
She offered evidence that it was the Chinese who discovered it, using simple bamboo rods.
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Kenneth O. May Prize and
Medal in
is an award of the
(ICHM) "for the encouragement and promotion of the history of mathematics internationally".
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