ACKNOWLEGEMENT: A Very Important Part of a Book

           Discovering how Mathematics travelled from East to West was the main thought of the previous installment. This installment started with Du Sautoy travelling in the northern Italy to visit Piero della Francesca’s old home. During his time, Piero della Francesca understood the perspective technique that represents 3D images in a 2D canvas. This is maybe because of the fact that he is both an artist and a mathematician. He did a lot of paintings and his works gave way for us to begin understanding geometry.

            Piero was not alone in pioneering the new scientific revolution. Rene Descartes was also a part of that revolution. His appendix of La Geometry was his proposal that linked geometry with algebra. Marin Mersenne, a monk mathematician who studied at the same school with Descartes, was a first class mathematician who contributed in the discoveries of prime numbers. Another great mathematician was Pierre de Fermat who became famous because of his ‘Fermat’s Last theorem’. His great contribution to Mathematics was virtually inventing ‘Number System Theory’.

            Sir Isaac Newton was famous because of his discovery of gravitation. Most of the people know him for this, but a lot of them are not aware that two years after Newton came back to Cambridge, he developed calculus. This theory helped us calculate the exact speed, rates of change and even reasoning. After few years, his discovery of calculus was rivaled by Gottfried Leibniz. It was said that Leibniz independently developed the infinitesimal calculus.

            The discoveries, contributions and theories of these great mathematicians were indeed a great help for us to be developed to the modern mathematics we now have. Without this time in history that we call golden age of mathematics, calculus, geometry, algebra and other essential branches of mathematics would not be present by now.

            The installment was a very good way to give recognition to our great mathematicians. I will be lying if I’ll say that I know all the mathematicians mentioned in the installment. Yes, some of them were not familiar to me, some of them I only know by the name and never really appreciated how huge their contributions to mathematics were. So, for me, the installment helped us recognize their values and realize how much better we are now because of the hard works and efforts their exerted to make our modern mathematics possible. I do believe that ‘acknowledgement’ is a very important part of a book because it is where the names of the people who helped in making the book realized are written and are given recognition.