What is it about?
During the Spanish eighteenth century, a process of modernization took place in scientific knowledge, partly driven by the circulation and appropriation of new scientific ideas. In this context, the Spanish mathematician Benito Bails (1731–1797) published his course Elementos de Matemática (Elements of Mathematics) consisting of ten volumes (1779–1799), in which, among other subjects, he presented one of the most complete mathematical developments of logarithmic calculation methods of his time, by using the infinity through infinite series. The aim of our article is to demonstrate how algebraic analytical reasoning enabled Bails to obtain new and more efficient infinite algorithms that converge more quickly in the computation of logarithms in any system. Our analysis concludes that Bails’ course constituted an innovation and provides evidence of its creativity, originality and ingenuity.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
We show how Euler's number ‘e’ is calculated, probably for the first time in Spanish teaching and the convergence for the computation of logarithms, in an eighteenth century mathematical text
Perspectives
The difussion of this course shows how modern mathematics was introduced in Spanish world.
Sra Mª Rosa Massa-Esteve
Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Infinite analytical procedures for the computation of logarithms in works by Benito Bails (1731–1797), British Journal for the History of Mathematics, May 2023, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/26375451.2023.2186648.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
