Aryabhatta mathematician mathematician

Biography

Aryabhata is also known as Aryabhata I to distinguish him from the later mathematician of the same name who lived about 400 years later.

Al-Biruni has not helped in understanding Aryabhata's life, for he seemed to believe that there were two different mathematicians called Aryabhata living at the same time. He therefore created a confusion of two different Aryabhatas which was not clarified until 1926 when B Datta showed that al-Biruni's two Aryabhatas were one and the same person.

We know the year of Aryabhata's birth since he tells us that he was twenty-three years of age when he wrote AryabhatiyaⓉ which he finished in 499.

Famous mathematicians

We have given Kusumapura, thought to be close to Pataliputra (which was refounded as Patna in Bihar in 1541), as the place of Aryabhata's birth but this is far from certain, as is even the location of Kusumapura itself. As Parameswaran writes in [26]:-

...

no final verdict can be given regarding the locations of Asmakajanapada and Kusumapur