Bhāskara I

Bhāskara
Known for	Bhaskara I's sine approximation formula

Bhāskara (c. 600 – c. 680) (Bengali: ভাস্কর; Marathi: भास्कर commonly called Bhaskara I to avoid confusion with the 12th century mathematician Bhāskara II) was a 7th-century mathematician, who was the first to write numbers in the Hindu decimal system with a circle for the zero, and who gave a unique and remarkable rational approximation of the sine function in his commentary on Aryabhatta's work. This commentary, Āryabhaṭīyabhāṣya, written in 629 CE, is the oldest known prose work in Sanskrit on mathematics and astronomy. He also wrote two astronomical works in the line of Aryabhata's school, the Mahābhāskarīya and the Laghubhāskarīya.

Little is known about Bhāskara's life. He was probably a Marathi astronomer. He was born at Bori, in Parbhani district of Maharashtra state in India in 7th century.

His astronomical education was given by his father. Bhaskara is considered the most important scholar of Aryabhata's astronomical school. He and Brahmagupta are two of the most renowned Indian mathematicians who made considerable contributions to the study of fractions.

Bhaskara's probably most important mathematical contribution concerns the representation of numbers in a positional system. The first positional representations were known to Indian astronomers about 500 years ago. However, the numbers were not written in figures, but in words or allegories, and were organized in verses. For instance, the number 1 was given as moon, since it exists only once; the number 2 was represented by wings, twins, or eyes, since they always occur in pairs; the number 5 was given by the (5) senses. Similar to our current decimal system, these words were aligned such that each number assigns the factor of the power of ten corresponding to its position, only in reverse order: the higher powers were right from the lower ones.

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