Diophantus
Greek mathematician (3rd century AD) / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Diophantus of Alexandria [1] (born c. AD 200 – c. 214; died c. AD 284 – c. 298) was a Greek mathematician, who was the author of a series of books called Arithmetica, many of which are now lost. His texts deal with solving algebraic equations.
Diophantine equations, Diophantine geometry, and Diophantine approximations are subareas of Number theory that are named after him.
Diophantus coined the term παρισότης (parisotes) to refer to an approximate equality.[2] This term was rendered as adaequalitas in Latin, and became the technique of adequality developed by Pierre de Fermat to find maxima for functions and tangent lines to curves.
Diophantus was the first Greek mathematician who recognized positive rational numbers as numbers, by allowing fractions for coefficients and solutions. In modern use, Diophantine equations are algebraic equations with integer coefficients, for which integer solutions are sought.