Post #3124411
2026-04-12 06:50 UTC
Yes, solving cubic equations was a big advancement, especially in the light of what came after that in the Abel-Galois direction.
I would argue, though, that trigonometry (India, 4th–6th century) was at least as big.
@davidsuculum@mathstodon.xyz
Replies (1)
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@antopatriarca@mathstodon.xyz 2026-04-12 08:09
@vnikolov@ieji.de @davidsuculum@mathstodon.xyz But that was still about 1000 years before, so it isn’t an exception of the “biggest mathematics invention in a thousand years”. I think however the cubic/quartic equation discovery is more important as the beginning of new discoveries than by itself. What followed has been arguably much more important than those formulas people seldom use.