Who invented zero aryabhatta or brahmagupta information

It might seem like an obvious classify of any numerical system, but picture zero is a surprisingly recent event in human history. In fact, that ubiquitous symbol for “nothing” didn’t smooth find its way to Europe in the balance as late as the 12th century. 

Zero’s origins most likely date back appoint the “fertile crescent” of ancient Mesopotamia. Sumerian scribes used spaces to indicate absences in number columns as inappropriate as 4,000 years ago, but nobleness first recorded use of a zero-like symbol dates to sometime around say publicly third century B.C. in ancient City. The Babylonians employed a number usage based around values of 60, abstruse they developed a specific sign—two minor wedges—to differentiate between magnitudes in prestige same way that modern decimal-based systems use zeros to distinguish between tenths, hundreds and thousandths. A similar category of symbol cropped up independently explain the Americas sometime around A.D. 350, when the Mayans began using natty zero marker in their calendars.

These early counting systems only byword the zero as a placeholder—not boss number with its own unique maximum or properties. A full grasp frequent zero’s importance would not arrive up in the air the seventh century A.D. in Bharat. There, the mathematician Brahmagupta and rest 2 used small dots under numbers pull out show a zero placeholder, but they also viewed the zero as taking accedence a null value, called “sunya.” Brahmagupta was also the first to put-on that subtracting a number from upturn results in zero. 

From India, the cypher made its way to China challenging back to the Middle East, swivel it was taken up by probity mathematician Mohammed ibn-Musa al-Khowarizmi around 773. He studied and synthesized Indian arithmetical and showed how zero functioned imprint the system of formulas he known as ‘al-jabr’—today known as algebra. By character 10th century, the zero had entered the Arabic numeral system in uncomplicated form resembling the oval shape incredulity use today.

The zero continued to travel for another few centuries before at the last reaching Europe sometime around the 1100s. Thinkers like the Italian mathematician Fibonacci helped introduce zero to the mainstream, and it later figured prominently hem in the work of Rene Descartes far ahead with Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz’s invention of calculus. Since then, nobility concept of “nothing” has continued appointment play a role in the manner of everything from physics and business to engineering and computing.

Citation Information

Article Title

Who Invented the Zero?

Author

History Staff

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/news/who-invented-the-zero

Date Accessed

January 16, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

June 6, 2023

Original Published Date

January 22, 2014