Biography of Leonardo Pisano Bigollo

(Fibonacci)

By Colin Riesbeck
1/3/17
Block 7
 Leonardo Pisano Bigollo was an Italian mathematician who popularized the Hindu-

Arabic numeral system in the western world and who introduced Europe to a sequence of

numbers known as Fibonacci numbers. This sequence of numbers is named after Leonardos

nickname Fibonacci, which comes from filius Bonacci, or son of Bonacci. He also changed the

way Europe did calculations by making it faster and easier than Roman calculations.

Leonardo Pisano Bigollo born in Pisa, Italy in 1170. His father was Guglielmo Bonacci,

who was an Italian merchant who directed a trading post in the port of Bugia, Algeria in North

Africa. When Guglielmo accepted the position at the trading post in 1192, he brought Leonardo

with him. This is where he learned of the Hindu-Arabic numeral system, which introduces the

numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 0 instead of Roman numerals. While he was traveling with

his father, he met other merchants and learned their way of doing arithmetic He then went to

study calculation with an Arab master during that time, and later on went to Egypt, Syria,

Greece, Sicily, and Provence to study different methods of calculation. Evidence of this appears

in his book Liber Abaci, When my father, who had been appointed by his country as public

notary in the customs at Bugia acting for the Pisan merchants going there, was in charge, he

summoned me to him while I was still a child, and having an eye to usefulness and future

convenience, desired me to stay there and receive instruction in the school of accounting. There,

when I had been introduced to the art of the Indians' nine symbols through remarkable teaching,
knowledge of the art very soon pleased me above all else and I came to understand it, for

whatever was studied by the art in Egypt, Syria, Greece, Sicily and Provence, in all its various

forms.

After his studies, he went back to Pisa to write a book called Liber Abaci in 1202, which

translates to Book of Abacus or Book of Calculation. He introduced the modus Indorum (method

of the Indians, or the Hindu-Arabic numerals). This was well received in Europe and deeply

impacted European thought which caused the growth of banking and accounting since it made

calculations easier and faster. The book also explained how to use Arabic numerals in business

for converting currencies, calculating profit and interest, irrational numbers, and prime numbers,

which were important in banking. In the third section of Liber Abaci, Leonardo presented the

following problem, A certain man put a pair of rabbits in a place surrounded on all sides by a

wall. How many pairs of rabbits can be produced from that pair in a year if it is supposed that

every month each pair begets a new pair which from the second month on becomes productive?

The resulting sequence was 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, etc. Each number is the sum of the

two preceding numbers, which means the sequence is infinite. This sequence would later be

called Fibonaccis sequence, which is what Leonardo is most remembered for today. He would

go on to write more books like Practia geometriae (1220), Flos (1225), and Liber quadratorum

(1225) in the 25 years he would spend in Pisa. Though not many copies were made since this
was before printing, all the books were hand written and the only way to get another was to

make another hand-written book.

In this picture, it shows the Fibonacci sequence if the numbers were the widths of

squares. As the squares get bigger and you go from a corner of a square to the corner diagonal of

it, and into the next square, you get a spiral.

Around the year 1200, the Roman emperor Frederick II had learned of Leonardos work

through his scholars in his court who had corresponded with Leonardo when he returned to Pisa.

Finally, in 1225 Leonardo and Fredericks court met and a scholar named Johannes of Palermo

presented Leonardo with a number of problems, of which he was able to solve three. Leonardo

then gave the solutions to the problems in his book Flos, which was given to Frederick.
Leonardo had collaborated with Dominicus Hispanus from Fredericks court at that time, whom

he later went on to dedicate Practica geometriae to. This wasnt the first time Leonardo had

worked with someone or off of someones ideas. He had worked with Johannes of Palermo from

Fredericks court, and he had based some work off of Euclid and Pythagoras.

After 1240, there is no record of Leonardo anywhere, and it is most likely that he died

between 1240 and 1250. There is no doubt that he was one of the best mathematicians of his

time, as he contributed to modern finance, present-value analysis, publishing entrepreneurship

(he published his own books), and other topics. Many things are also named after him, like the

Fibonacci sequence, Fibonaccis identity (the product of two sums each of two squares is itself a

sum of two squares), Fibonacci search technique (divide and conquer algorithm), and the Pisano

period (the period with which the sequence of Fibonacci numbers taken modulo n repeats).

Beyond that, there was an asteroid (6765 Fibonacci) and a band (The Fibonaccis) were named

after him.
 Bibliography

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encyclopedia Retrieved from http://alchetron.com/Fibonacci-1051696-W

Retrieved January 3, 2017, from http://i.stack.imgur.com/eHWK9.png

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