Who was Fibonacci?
Fibonacci, known in his day as Leonardo of Pisa, was an Italian mathematician who lived during the Middle Ages. He is widely regarded as the finest mathematician of his age, and although little is known about him, most of us use the contributions of Fibonacci to society every day. In addition to the classical sequence of numbers named after him, Fibonacci also brought the use of Arabic numerals to the West, along with the use of decimal points. These two math features are often taken for granted today, but they were revolutionary in the Middle Ages. Leonardo of Pisa lived from approximately 1170 to 1250. His father was nicknamed Bonacchio, meaning simple or good, and Fibonacci was nicknamed for his father — Fi’Bonacchi means “son of Bonacchio.” Fibonacci’s knowledge of the world was initiated at a young age, because his father was a trader, allowing the son to travel extensively during his youth. Fibonacci’s travels undoubtedly introduced him to the Arabic numeral system, along with Mi
The “greatest European mathematician of the middle ages”, his full name was Leonardo of Pisa, or Leonardo Pisano in Italian since he was born in Pisa,Italy (see Pisa on Google Earth), the city with the famous Leaning Tower, about 1175 AD. Pisa was an important commercial town in its day and had links with many Mediterranean ports. Leonardo’s father, Guglielmo Bonacci, was a kind of customs officer in the present-day Algerian town of Béjaïa, (see Bejaia on Google Earth ) formerly known as Bugia or Bougie, where wax candles were exported to France. They are still called “bougies” in French. So Leonardo grew up with a North African education under the Moors and later travelled extensively around the Mediterranean coast. He would have met with many merchants and learned of their systems of doing arithmetic. He soon realised the many advantages of the “Hindu-Arabic” system over all the others. D E Smith points out that another famous Italian – St Francis of Assisi (a nearby Italian town) –
This introduction to the medieval mathematican Fibonacci shows how important he was in the development of modern mathematics. The implications of Fibonacci’s adoption of Indian and Arabic systems is shown and the basic principles of Fibonacci numbers explained. The author, Dr Ron Knott was a former lecturer in the Department of Mathematics and Computing Science at the University of Surrey.
