The Place of Nicolas Chuquet in the History of Mathematics

Abstract

In order to assess the importance of Nicolas Chuquet’s writings for the history of mathematics, it is first necessary to measure Chuquet’s Triparty manuscript against its most significant precursor, Fibonacci’s Liber abaci, and against the most influential exposition of his day, Pacioli’s Summa. The comparison between Chuquet and Pacioli has already been explored by Cantor (1892) and by Juschkewitsch (1961), but these authors had access only to the material published by Marre in 1880/1, and so were unaware of the contents of Chuquet’s Geometry and Commercial Arithmetic. Lack of space precludes detailed comparison with other mathematicians of the Middle Ages and early Renaissance, apart from a note on Chuquet’s sources. A more detailed study, so far as the Geometry is concerned, is to be found in L’Huillier’s edition (1979).