Symbolic algebra
Álgebra simbólica (notación literal)
- Date
- 1591 · confidence high
- Place
- Tours, France
- Credited to
- François Viète (In artem analyticem isagoge)
- People
- 👤 François Viète1540–1603
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What it is
The use of letters to represent both unknowns and known parameters, allowing general formulae to be written instead of solving individual cases. It inaugurated modern algebra.
Descartes (1637) fixed today's notation: final letters for unknowns, numerical exponents.
What it led to
- Analytic geometry and infinitesimal calculus
- The mathematical formulation of physical laws (Galileo, Newton)
- Cryptography and cipher analysis (Viète deciphered Spanish codes)
Built on
- Early algebra (Diophantus' Arithmetica)c. 250 CE
- Arabic algebra (al-Khwarizmi)
- Italian rhetorical algebra (Cardano, Tartaglia)
- Symbols + and − (Widmann, 1489), = (Recorde, 1557)
Made possible
- Analytic geometry1637
- Infinitesimal calculus1665-1684
- Descartes's notation (x, y, exponents)