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Essay on Fibonacci and the Golden Ratio
Leonardo of Pisa, better known as Fibonacci, was born in Pisa, Italy, about 1175 AD. He was known as the greatest mathematician of the middle ages.
Leonardo Fibonacci was born in Pisa, Italy around 1175 to Guilielmo Bonacci. Leonardo’s father was the secretary of the Republic of Pisa and directed the Pisan trading colony. His father intended on Leonardo becoming a merchant. His father enlisted him in the Pisan Republic, sending him to various countries. As Leonardo continued to travel with his father, he acquired mathematical skills while in Bugia. Fibonacci continued to study throughout his travels, which ended around the year 1200 (Trudi, 1997).
Leonardo began writing books on number theory, practical problems of business mathematics, surveying, advanced problems in algebra and recreational mathematics. Leonardo’s recreational problems became known as story problems and became mental challenges in the 13th century. Of all the books he wrote we still have copies of Liber abbaci (1202), Practica geometriae (1220), Flos (1225), and Liber Quadratorum. Sadly his books on commercial arithmetic Di minor guisa is lost as well as his commentary on Book X Euclid’s Elements. One of Leonardo’s contributions to mathematics was his introducing the Decimal Number system into Europe (Trudi, 1997). He was one of the first people to introduce the Hindu-Arabic number system into Europe. Fibonacci also introduced the Decimal Positional System, which originated from India and Arabia.
Completed in 1202, Fibonacci wrote a book titled Liber abaci on how to do arithmetic in the decimal system. Although it was Fibonacci himself that discovered the sequence of numbers, it was French mathematician, Edouard Lucas who gave the actual name of "Fibonacci numbers" to the series of numbers that was first mentioned by Fibonacci in his book. Since this discovery, it has been shown that Fibonacci numbers can be seen in a variety of things today (Richard, 1998)....
