Person · mathematician & astronomer · India
Bhāskara II
Also known as Bhaskara II at Ujjain
The 12-century mathematician Bhaskara II (Bhaskaracharya, 1114-1185), head of the astronomical observatory at Ujjain. His 1150 CE Siddhanta Shiromani (Crest-Jewel of Treatises) is a four-part treatise on arithmetic (Lilavati, famously written for his daughter), algebra (Bijaganita, which developed Brahmagupta's work on indeterminate equations and chakravala cyclic method), spherical trigonometry (Goladhyaya), and astronomy (Grahaganita). His Bijaganita gave the first general proofs of the Pythagorean theorem, early forms of differential calculus (including the concept of derivative), and the cyclic method solution of Pell's equation. The Ujjain astronomical observatory he headed became a leading figure in subsequent Indian and medieval Islamic astronomy. His works were translated into Persian under Akbar (1587) and partially into Latin by Henry Thomas Colebrooke in 1817.
- Date
- 1114–1185
- Function
- Science & medicine
- Condition
- historical person
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 23.180, 75.780
About the place
Placed at Ujjain, where he headed the astronomical observatory — the same institution Varahamihira and Brahmagupta's tradition worked in — and where he wrote the Siddhanta Shiromani in 1150.
Connections (3)
- Ujjain astronomical traditionVarāhamihira
Varahamihira in the sixth century and Bhaskara II in the twelfth are six hundred years apart and both worked at Ujjain, which held an astronomical establishment continuously across that whole span — the institutional continuity is the point rather than any personal link. Brahmagupta's tradition, the prime meridian, the observatory Jai Singh later rebuilt there: Ujjain is the one place in Indian science with an unbroken record of that length.
- Life routeUjjain observatory (Vedh Shala)
Bhāskara II headed the astronomical observatory at Ujjain, as Varāhamihira and Brahmagupta's tradition had before him, which makes the town the longest-running centre of mathematical astronomy in India. It sits on the meridian Indian astronomers took as prime, so longitudes across the subcontinent were reckoned from it for more than a thousand years before Greenwich existed.
- TransmissionAkbar
Akbar had the Līlāvatī translated into Persian by Faizi in 1587, and the Bīja Ganita followed under Shah Jahan. The Mughal translation bureau moved Sanskrit mathematics, the Mahābhārata, the Rāmāyana and the Upanishads into Persian over three reigns, which is how much of this material first reached European readers — through Persian rather than directly from Sanskrit.
On these journeys
Sources
MacTutor History of Mathematics; Siddhanta Shiromani.
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