FRANCISCUS VIETA

FRANCISCUS VIETA

His life

Vieta was born in 1540 at Fontenay-le-Comte, Vendée and was dead on 23 December 1603 at Paris. His father was an attorney and her mother was the first president of the Catholic League of France. Vieta went to a Franciscan school and in 1558 studied law at Poitiers, graduating as a Bachelor of Law in 1559. A year later, he began his career as an attorney in his native town. He served Henry III and Henry IV. He was influenced by Ramus. As we know he was a great French mathematician whose work on new algebra was an important step towards modern algebra, due to its innovative use of letters as parameters in equations to denote quantities. Vieta was accused of Protestantism by the Catholic League, nevertheless Vieta defended and protected Protestants his whole life.

His works

1571, he discovered the first infinite product in history of mathematics by giving an expression of π:

He provides 10 decimal places of π by applying the Archimedes method to a polygon with 6 × 2¹⁶ = 393 216 sides.

Trigonometric formulas: Sin (a) +Sin (b) =Sin (a+b)* Cos (a-b)/2 where a and b are the opposite angles.

From 1571, he published Francisci Vietœi universalium inspectionum ad canonem mathematicum liber singularis; a book of trigonometry, in abbreviated Canonen mathematicum, where there are many formulas. His formulas can be proven by expanding the equality.

Vieta is considered as the most important mathematician in bridging the gap between the reconnaissance math to the modern world math.