Pedro Nunes (1502-1578): His Lost Algebra and Other Discoveries(182 American University Studies, Series 9: History)

Pedro Nunes played a major part in the discovery of the world by Portuguese mariners. In this book, his mathematical and scientific achievements are described, together with evidence on his life and friends arising from a collection of his Greek and Latin poems, and from religious notes he composed during his later years. An English version of his long-lost Portuguese algebra is included, as well as poems and letters by his friends translated into English for the first time. These discoveries came from a manuscript recently found in the municipal library of Evora, the perfectly preserved Renaissance city that in Nunes' day was the home of King John III.

About the Author :
The Author: John Martyn, a Cambridge graduate and lecturer in the Department of Classics at Melbourne University since 1958, has published over 100 articles and books, including the Epigrammata of John Owen (2 volumes), the Satirae of Juvenal and Tria Itinera of Janus Secundus, the Tragedy of Ines de Castro and Bristo by Antonio Ferreira, and recently Andre de Resende: On Court Life (Peter Lang, 1990), and The Siege of Mazagao: A Perilous Moment in the Defence of Christendom against Islam (Peter Lang, 1994). He is now editing the Poemata omnia of Resende.

Review :
Nunes' reputation as the outstanding Portuguese mathematician of the sixteenth century will make this book interesting to those of our own. His application of his theoretical discoveries to calculations of time and space and ultimately, to navigation, giving Portugal serious advantages over Castile in the discovery of huge tracts of the earth's surface, are of immense interest and importance. His interests in religion during a period of acute persecution are invaluable today in the understanding of his times, particularly in light of his Jewish origins. Dr. Martyn's English versions of Nunes' prose and poetry in Portuguese, Castilian, and Latin are always elegant and accurate and never ponderous or affected. I strongly recommend this remarkable study of the life and work of an outstanding Humanist. (R.W. Thompson, Emeritus Professor, La Trobe University) This book makes several points about Nunes' mathematics, which I endorse strongly. There is a clear, organized and yet simple exposition of the fundamental operations of algebra, using and accepting negative numbers and quantities, well before such expositions and acceptances found their way into mathematics in the rest of Europe. The mathematics is of practical importance, because it makes for ease of calculation, for algorithms that could be explained to ordinary people and applied by them, as was done later in the computation of nautical tables by unemployed hairdressers in nineteenth-century Paris. (Jim Cross, Reader in Mathematics, Melbourne University)