Was Newton beaten by 250 years?

The history books may need to be re-written according to a new finding which suggests Newton was not responsible for the development of calculus.

Could an obscure group of Indian scholars have created calculus before Newton?

A team from the Universities of Manchester and Exeter suggest a little known collection of scholars in southwest India discovered one of the founding principles of modern mathematics hundreds of years before Newton.

According to the team, the ‘Kerala School’ identified the infinite series - one of the basic components of calculus - in about 1350. The discovery is currently attributed in books to Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibnitz at the end of the seventeenth century.  

Dr George Gheverghese Joseph, who made the revelations while trawling through Indian papers for a third edition of his book ‘The Crest of the Peacock: the Non-European Roots of Mathematics’, said: “The beginnings of modern maths is usually seen as a European achievement but the discoveries in medieval India between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries have been ignored or forgotten. Names from the Kerala School, notably Madhava and Nilakantha, should stand shoulder to shoulder with Newton as they discovered the other great component of calculus - infinite series.”

The Kerala School also discovered what amounted to the Pi series and used it to calculate Pi correct to 9, 10 and later 17 decimal places. There is also strong circumstantial evidence, say the team, that the Indians passed on their discoveries to mathematically knowledgeable Jesuit missionaries who visited India during the fifteenth century. That knowledge, they argue, may have eventually been passed on to Newton himself. 

“There were many reasons why the contribution of the Kerala school has not been acknowledged - a prime reason is neglect of scientific ideas emanating from the Non-European world - a legacy of European colonialism and beyond,” said Dr Joseph.