Varahamihira

Varahamihira (505-587) was born in Kapitthaka, India. The most famous work by Varahamihira is the Pancasiddhantika (The Five Astronomical Canons) dated 575 AD. This work is important in itself and also in giving us information about older Indian texts which are now lost. The work is a treatise on mathematical astronomy and it summarises five earlier astronomical treatises, namely the Surya, Romaka, Paulisa, Vasistha and Paitamaha siddhantas.

One treatise which Varahamihira summarises was the Romaka-Siddhanta which itself was based on the epicycle theory of the motions of the Sun and the Moon given by the Greeks in the 1st century AD.

Varahamihira made some important mathematical discoveries. Among these are certain trigonometric formulae which translated into our present day notation correspond to

sin x = cos(ð/2 - x),
sin2x + cos2x = 1, and
(1 - cos 2x)/2 = sin2x.

Another important contribution to trigonometry was his sine tables where he improved those of Aryabhata I giving more accurate values. This motivated much of the improved accuracy they achieved by developing new interpolation methods.

The Jaina school of mathematics investigated rules for computing the number of ways in which r objects can be selected from n objects over the course of many hundreds of years. They gave rules to compute the binomial coefficients nCr which amount to

nCr = n(n-1)(n-2)...(n-r+1)/r!

However, Varahamihira attacked the problem of computing nCr in a rather different way. He wrote the numbers n in a column with n = 1 at the bottom. He then put the numbers r in rows with r = 1 at the left-hand side. Starting at the bottom left side of the array which corresponds to the values n = 1, r = 1, the values of nCr are found by summing two entries, namely the one directly below the (n, r) position and the one immediately to the left of it. Of course this table is none other than Pascal's triangle for finding the binomial coefficients despite being viewed from a different angle from the way we build it up today.

Varahamihira's work on magic squares. In particular he examines a pandiagonal magic square of order four which occurs in Varahamihira's work.

Courtesy:Internet