The Life of Fibonacci

Leonardo Fibonacci was an Italian mathematician, considered by some, as the most talented mathematician of the middle ages. Leonardo Fibonacci was born in Pisa, Italy, around 1175. His father was Guillermo Bonacci, a secretary of the Republic of Pisa. His father was also a customs officer for the North African city of Bugia. Sometime after 1192. Bonacci brought his son with him to Bugia.Guilielmo wanted for Leonardo to become a merchant and so arranged for his instruction in calculation techniques, especially those involving the Hindu - Arabic numerals which had not yet been introduced into Europe. Since Fibonacci was the son of a merchant, he was able go travel freely all over the Byzantine Empire. Merchants at the time were immune, so they were allowed to move about freely. This allowed him to visit many of the area's centers of trade. While he was there, he was able to learn both the mathematics of the scholars and the calculating schemes in popular use, at the time.

Around 1200, Fibonacci returned to Pisa. Leonardo Fibonacci was the greatest European mathematician of the Middle Ages. He was the first to introduce the Hindu - Arabic number system into Europe. Leonardo wrote a book on how to do arithmetic in the decimal system, called "Liber abaci", completed in 1202. It describes the rules we are all now learn at elementary school for adding numbers, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. In his book Leonardo wrote the numerals in descending order and his fractions...

The Life of Fibonacci

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