A Study in the Mathematical Contributions of Varahmihira and his Heritage

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This book mainly focuses on the life and contribution of Acarya Varahmihira, one of the most outstanding mathematicians of the ‘Golden Age of mathematics’ in India (from 5th to 12th Century AD), to the discipline. Since Varahmihira, following the ancient India tradition had written almost nothing about himself, there remained a lot of ambiguity about his life and flourishing time. It examines in detail almost all available evidences and attempts to set right the arising disputes. Refuting convincingly, the assertions of H.T. Colebrooke (1872) and Swami Satya Prakash Saraswati that Aryabhat was the founder of Algebra in India, the book present the systematic account of algebraic equations, permutations and combinations from many centuries prior to Aryabhat and highlights the role of Varahmihira and his school up to the time of Bhaskaracarya.

The Book claims that 200 years before the Ptolemy’s observatory Alexandria, two observatory were established as Ujjain and Dhar, which were renovated by Varahmihira, who constructed the first observatory of the Middle East at Junde-Shapur in Iran during the reign of the king Khusro-l Anosharvan.
Finally, it presents an interesting account of the journey of Indian Mathematics to the court of Khalifa Al Mansur, which paved the way for systematic development of Mathematics in Europe.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR G S Pandey

Professor G. S. Pandey completed M.Sc. in Mathematics from the University of Sagaur in 1960, securing second position in merit list. He obtained Ph.D and . Sc degrees in 1963 and 1968 respectively for his research work on “Summability of special Orthogonal Expansions”. Professor Pandey has been a Visiting Scholar at mathematical Institute of Hungarian Academy of Science (Budapest), Fulbright Fellow (Chicago, USA) and Fellow, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla for three years. He worked for 15 years as Head, School of Studies in Mathematics, Vikram University. He was the president of Indian Society for history of Mathematics for six years. He has published64 research papers in reputed foreign and Indian journals, five books and a novel about the life and work of Acarya Varahmihira (published by Bhartiya Jnanpeeth, New Delhi, 2009). Fourteen students have obtained Ph. D under his supervision. He worked as Editor, Vikram Mathematical Journal for 10 years and was reviewer for Zentralblatt fur Mathematik (Berlin) for 20 years. Presently, Professor Pandey is engaged in research work on Approximation Theory, generalized Functions, Macroeconomic Anallysis and history of Mathematics.