Who invented ZERO?

Thanks to Jeremy Perkins @jeremyperkins for making this photo available freely on Unsplash 🎁 https://unsplash.com/photos/1XgFFEG_RGA

We use zero all the time and it has great significance in our lives. Here’s an example:

Teacher: How much homework do you
want?

Students: ZERO! 😁

Even in ancient times:

Villager: How many boars did you
catch?

Hunter: ZERO. 😭

It’s going to be bark and berries for dinner tonight.

But who invented it and why does it matter?

To answer the latter first: because inventors deserve the credit.

The answer to the question of who invented ZERO is that the idea was conceived of independently in many parts of the world, but if you have to hone it down to one: it was the Hindu astronomer
and mathematician Brahmagupta in 628 A.D.

First, it had a journey to embark from its inception as Sumerian twin angled placeholders 4,000-5,000 years ago to Babylonian placeholders around 300 B.C.

600 years later in a land faraway, the Mayans independently developed zero as a placeholder in their calendar around 350 A.D., showing great minds really do think alike.

Then, in India around 458 A.D., zero emerged from a bridge between philosophy and mathematics. The Buddhist concept of nothingness melded with numbers. In 628 B.C., Brahmagupta developed a symbol for zero: a dot underneath numbers, and the rest is history etched in
ancient stones.

For more about ZERO’s inception,
read on:

https://www.livescience.com/27853-who-invented-zero.html

https://detechter.com/untold-story-behind-real-invention-zero/

Looking at signing your child up for math tuition but don’t know where to start? Feel free to get in touch and speak to our professionals to find out more!

Author

Christina Sng is a three-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author that finds peace in mathematics and the macabre. Her poetry, fiction, essays, and art appear in Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, Interstellar Flight Magazine, and The Washington Post. Aside from having over 20 years of experience in the field of writing, she also has an extensive background in UX design and IT. Her educational background combined with her interests and neverending curiosity about the world is the perfect recipe to have her tackle fascinating topics about math. She is able to approach the highly logical field of mathematics through an extremely creative lens that sheds new light and exposes new avenues on how it impacts our lives.