The birth of the forbidden number
The magic of the complex plane
Surpassing i with quaternions
The infinite climb of dimensions
007skaty Impressionism
Just an impression! (Just an impression!) We're going past the lines!
007skaty Rafael Bombelli designed a new arithmetic system for impossible square roots.
007skaty Solving quadratic equations yielded negative square roots, which scholars rejected as impossible because no number multiplied by itself can equal a negative
007skaty Public math duels in Renaissance Italy led to the discovery of imaginary numbers
007skaty Match real and imaginary numbers to discover how Bombelli solved impossible equations.
Descartes' mistake: René Descartes, who famously said 'I think, therefore I am,' dismissed imaginary numbers as completely useless, completely missing their future role in modern technology.
Why did early mathematicians believe that the square root of a negative number was impossible?
007skaty Caspar Wessel and Carl Friedrich Gauss resolved decades of confusion by giving the imaginary unit i a physical, geometric location.
Which ancient Greek mathematician first recorded an impossible square root while calculating the volume of a pyramid?
Which 1545 book by Gerolamo Cardano first published the systematic use of negative square roots?
In which European country did mathematicians hold public duels to solve algebraic equations during the Renaissance?
What crucial mathematical concept did Rafael Bombelli introduce in his 1572 book 'L'Algebra'?
What was Rafael Bombelli's primary profession before writing his revolutionary mathematics book?
Which legendary Swiss mathematician first used the letter 'i' to represent the imaginary unit?
Which famous French philosopher and mathematician coined the term 'imaginary' as a sarcastic insult?