Diophantus of

Alexandria
By: Alexandria Howell
Class: History of Mathematics 332
 Diophantus
• Diophantus lived in Alexandria, Egypt, between 200-284 A.D died at the age
84.
• Diophantus was called “the father of algebra”, known for Alexandrian
Greek Mathematician, and the author of series of books called Arithmetica,
many of which are now lost.
• These texts deal with solving algebraic equations, and on theory of numbers.
• Diophantus wrote several other books besides Arthmetica, but very few
survived.
 Puzzle
• The most details of Diophantus’s life came from Greek Anthology, complied
by Metrodorus around 500 AD. This puzzle contains one about Diophantus
which say….(next slide)….
the puzzle implies…
X= x/6 + x/12 + x/7 + 5 + x/2 +4
Diophantus also dealt with [Egyptian arithmetic] more accurately.
 Diophantus

‘Here lies Diophantus,’ the wonder behold

Through are algebraic, the stone tells how old:
‘God gave him his boyhood one-sixth of his life,
One twelfth more as youth while whiskers grew rife;
And then yet one-seventh are marriage ere marriage begun;
In five years there came a bouncing new son.
Alas, the dear child of master and sage
After attaining half measure of his father’s life chill fate took him.
After consoling his fate by the science of numbers for four years, he
ended his life.

Was married at the age 33, birth of his son was at 38, and the death
of his son was at 42 four years before his own.
 Diophantus

Diophantus work is divided up into 13 books. Six of the books

were known in Europe on the late 15 century, transmitted in Greek
Byzantine scholars and numbered from I to VI; four other books
were discovered in 1968 on the 9th century Arabic translation by
Quasta ibn Luqa. However, the Arabic text lacks mathematical
symbolism, and it appears to be based on a later Greek
commentary- perhaps that of Hypatia (370-415) that diluted
Diophantus’s exposition.
 Diophantus/Arithmetica
• Diophantus explains his symbolism – he uses symbols for the unknown (corresponding to
our x) and its powers, positive or negative, as well as for some arithmetic operations- most
of these symbols are clearly scribal abbreviations.
• After teaching multiplication of the powers of the unknown, Diophantus explains the
multiplication of positive and negative terms and then how to reduce an equation to one out
of the way.
• Although Diophantus made important advances in symbolism, he still lacked the necessary
notation to express more general methods. Some of the limitations of Diophantus’ notation
for one unknown and when problems involved more than a single unknown Diophantus
was reduced to expressing in words. He also lacked a symbol for a general number n. Ex:
12+6n(divide)/n2 – 3.
 Arithmetica
• The major work of Diophantus, and the most
work on Algebra in Greek mathematics.
• It is a collection of problems giving numerical
solutions of both determine and indeterminate
equations.
• Only positive rational solutions, negative or
irrational square roots.
• Diophantus looked at all three types of quadratic
equations ax2+bx=c, ax2=bx+c, ax2+c=bx . The
reason why is because he did not have any
notation for zero and he avoided negative
coefficients by considering the given numbers
a,b,c to all positive in each of the three cases
above.
 Relevance of/to mathematics today
• Diophantus’s work has an large influence in history. His work today shows
why he is “the father of algebra”. The first person known to use algebraic
notation and symbolism. Before him everyone wrote out equations
completely, even though algebra still had a long way to go before very
general problems could be written down and solved.
• Today in classroom Diophantine equation involves only sums, products, and
powers in which all the constants are integers, and the only solutions of
interest are integers.
 Reference
• www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diophantus
• www.britannica.com/biography/Diophantus
• www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/biographies/Diopahntus.html
• www.Britannica.com/topic/Diophantine-equation.
The End