jan 1, 1340 - Nicole Oresme

Description:

Frenchman Nicole Oresme is an important (but largely unknown and underrated) mathematician and scholar of the 14th Century. He uses a system of rectangular coordinates centuries before his countryman René Descartes popularized the idea, as well as perhaps the first time-speed-distance graph. Oresme extends this doctrine to figures of three dimensions.Also, leading from his research into musicology, he is the first to use fractional exponents, and also works on infinite series, being the first to prove that the harmonic series 1⁄1+ 1⁄2+ 1⁄3+ 1⁄4+ 1⁄5... is a divergent infinite series (i.e. not tending to a limit, other than infinity). Oresme is the first mathematician to prove this fact, and (after his proof was lost) it was not proven again until the 17th century by the Bernoulli brothers

Added to timeline:

Date: