http://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/devlin_10_02.html
That Keith Devlin, "The Math Guy" on National Public Radio, could barely, and only with greatest difficulty, find any recognition whatsoever of Leonardo Pisano in 2002, Pisa, Italy, the eminent mathematical author of LIBER ABACI's homeland, is hardly surprising. That city's tourism office was even ignorant of this sage's existence, much less of any statue of him!
I was surprised to note that the great and keenly observant author, Mark Twain in his epic, THE INNOCENTS ABROAD, does not mention him at all, when he, and his fellow American 'pilgrims', also visited Pisa in the 1850s! Pisano's "The Book of Computation", apart only from the Bible, may very well be THE most important ever written in western civilization. It is where our numerical system comes from, and our algebra, algorithms, geometry.
This book brought Hindu-Arabic numerals, symbols, geometry,and algebra from Africa and the Mediterranean region to Europe, via Italy, in 1202, when it was first published. Prior to his encyclopedic treatment of this extremely vital subject, block-Roman numerals were still in use in Europe.
Leonardo Pisano a/k/a "Fibonnaci" "was instructed as a youth in Bugia, a trading enclave established by the city of Pisa and located on the Barbary Coast of Africa in the Western Muslim Empire (present day Algeria). He continued to develop as a mathematician by traveling on business and studying in such places as Egypt, Syria, Provence (southeastern France) and Byzantium (Istanbul, Turkey). He developed contacts with scientists throughout the Mediterranean world. He became proficient in Euclid's 'ELEMENTS' and the Greek mathematical method of definition, theorem and proof. He learned from the Arabic scientists the Hindu numbers and their place system, and the algorithms for the arithmetic operations. He also learned the method of algebra principally found in the work of al-Kwarizmi. Through his study and travel and learned disputations with world scientists, he became a very superior creative mathematician. He participated in the academic court of Frederick II (of the Holy Roman Empire) who sought out and recognized great scholars of the thirteenth century. Leonardo with his scientific knowledge saw clearly the advantages of the useful mathematics known to the Muslim scientists, principally their Hindu numerals, and decimal place system, their calculating algorithms, and their algebra.....Leonardo resolved to write...'LIBER ABACI' to bring to the Italian people the world's best mathematics in a usable form."
p.1, FIBONACCI'S LIBER ABACI: LEONARDO PISANSO'S 'BOOK OF CALCULATION' translation into modern English by Laurence Sigler (deceased) (Springer-Verlag, NY, Berlin: 1202, 2003)
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