The following sections of this BookRags Literature Study Guide is offprint from Gale's For Students Series: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Commonly Studied Works: Introduction, Author Biography, Plot Summary, Characters, Themes, Style, Historical Context, Critical Overview, Criticism and Critical Essays, Media Adaptations, Topics for Further Study, Compare & Contrast, What Do I Read Next?, For Further Study, and Sources.
(c)1998-2002; (c)2002 by Gale. Gale is an imprint of The Gale Group, Inc., a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Gale and Design and Thomson Learning are trademarks used herein under license.
The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction: "Social Concerns", "Thematic Overview", "Techniques", "Literary Precedents", "Key Questions", "Related Titles", "Adaptations", "Related Web Sites". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults: "About the Author", "Overview", "Setting", "Literary Qualities", "Social Sensitivity", "Topics for Discussion", "Ideas for Reports and Papers". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
All other sections in this Literature Study Guide are owned and copyrighted by BookRags, Inc.
Although a great deal remains unknown about Chuquet's life, his contributions to the development of mathematics are significant. Chuquet's accomplishments are known mainly from a book published in 1520 by a fellow Frenchman, Etienne de la Roche, who also went by the name Villefranche. De la Roche plagiarized Chuquet's mathematics throughout his own book; however, it is likely that without de la Roche's unscrupulous behavior, Chuquet's work would have gone largely undocumented.
Chuquet was born in Paris, France, where he pursued many studies, concentrating specifically in the field of medicine. How he became interested in mathematics and teaching has not been recorded; however around the 1480s, it is believed that Chuquet was teaching arithmetic in Lyons, France. Known as the "master of algorithms," Chuquet demonstrates a solid grasp of algebra in his book, The Triparty, which was written about 1484 but not published until 1880. The book consists of three parts, the first section covering computation with rational numbers, the second, concerning computation with roots of numbers, and the third explaining algebra and the theory of equations. It is in this final section that Chuquet introduces our familiar numerical terms billion, trillion, and quadrillion. He also clarified the use of fractions, or "broken numbers," as he referred to them. Chuquet's work with fractions led to his discovery of an iterative method involving interpolation that makes it possible to solve any algebraic problem having a rational solution. Chuquet was not as progressive in his treatment of negative numbers, referring to them as "absurd numbers." However, Chuquet's many other improvements of algebraic methods helped influence future mathematicians, particularly Italian Luca Pacioli (1445"-1514"), who published a work on bookkeeping by double entry entitled Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportioni et proportionalita in 1494.