1642-1708

Japanese Mathematician

Takakazu Seki Kowa was one of the few notable Japanese mathematicians prior to the late modern era. At a time when his country was shut off from most of the world and controlled by military dictators called shoguns, Seki Kowa—himself a samurai under the shogunate—sparked Japanese scholars' interest in mathematics. In the course of his career, he developed his own system of notation, as well as an early form of calculus.

The son of a samurai named Nagaakira Utiyama, Seki was born in the town of Fujioka in March 1642. It is not clear whether his father died, or if the father himself sent the boy to live with the family of accountant Seki Gorozayemon; but in any case this occurred when the boy was very small, and he took on the name of his adoptive father. From an early...