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This book examines a Tractatus algorismi written in 1307 in Montpellier by Jacopo da Firenze. It is one of the earliest surviving "abbacus" treatises and the first to contain a presentation of algebra. This current book includes the text in late medieval Italian with an English translation. The author offers extensive discussions of the contents and its place within early abbacus culture. Historians, mathematicians, and students interested in the history of mathematics will find this text provides a fascinating glimpse into the field's early development and evolution.
About the author
Jens Høyrup (*1943): educated as a physicist at Copenhagen University. From 1971 to 1973 he taught physics in an engineering school, and from 1973 onward he taught first in the domain of social, then human sciences, at Roskilde University, Denmark, until he retired in 2005. From 1995 until retirement he taught a course of general history of science and guided student projects broadly within this field. Much of his research has dealt with the conceptual, cultural and social history of pre-Modern mathematics.
Summary
This book examines a Tractatus algorismi written in 1307 in Montpellier by Jacopo da Firenze. It is one of the earliest surviving "abbacus" treatises and the first to contain a presentation of algebra. This current book includes the text in late medieval Italian with an English translation. The author offers extensive discussions of the contents and its place within early abbacus culture. Historians, mathematicians, and students interested in the history of mathematics will find this text provides a fascinating glimpse into the field’s early development and evolution.
