Example Of The History Of Zero Research Paper

Using the number “zero” in our everyday math has become so common and familiar that it is hard to imagine it is a fairly new phenomenon and before its appearance people did their math in a whole different way.
The first people to use a symbol to show the absence of a number were the Babylonians in 2000 BC. Thus, the Sumerians and then the Akkadians before them in 2500 BC who did have a counting system did not have the symbol zero. But still, it was not used as we know it today and it did not have a name. The Indians were the first people to understand zero and accept it both as as a symbol and as a concept.
Indians used dots underneath numbers to indicate the symbol of zero and called it “śūnya” which means empty. Brahmagupta - an Indian mathematician - set rules for mathematical operations of subtraction, addition and multiplication with zero but he failed to set a rule for division by zero; something that was later covered by Isaac Newton.
Mohammed ibn-Musa al-Khowarizmi - an Iranian mathematician - was the first person to work on equations that equaled zero, which is now known as “algebra.” It was after the conquest of Spanish by Moors that zero finally reached Europe, followed by Khowarizmi’s writings that started being read in England.
Getting to know zero is one of the most important things that has happened in science since the creation of the universe. Without it, we would not have achieved many of the mathematical progressions, the result of which we are using in our everyday lives. Without zero, Calculus would not be born and consequently we would not have physics and engineering.

Works Cited

Wallin, Nils-bertil. "How Was Zero Discovered?" Yale Global. N.p., 19 Nov. 2002. Web. 22 Feb. 2015.
Abu Ja'far Muhammad Ibn Musa Al-Khwarizmi." Al-Khwarizmi Biography. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Feb. 2015.