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ScienceEducation

The Kerala school

Indian mathematicians derive infinite series for trigonometric functions.

When
Duration
150 years
Known to
± 30 years
Era
Post-Classical, Holocene

Madhava of Sangamagrama and his successors, working in Kerala from around 1350, develop infinite series expansions for sine, cosine and arctangent, and a series for pi — results rediscovered in Europe by Newton, Gregory and Leibniz two to three centuries later. They also have a clear concept of the limit of a series. Whether any of this reached Europe through Jesuit contacts is an open question with no established answer.

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