Cheng Dawei, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetCheng Dawei
Chinese mathematician
Date of Birth: 03-May-1533
Place of Birth: Xiuning County, Anhui, China
Date of Death: 18-Sep-1606
Profession: writer, mathematician
Zodiac Sign: Taurus 
About Cheng Dawei
- Cheng Dawei (1533–1606), also known as Da Wei Cheng or Ch'eng Ta-wei, is a Chinese mathematician known mainly as the author of Suanfa Tongzong (General Source of Computational Methods).
- He has been described as "the most illustrious Chinese arithmetician."Almost all that is known about his life is contained in a passage written in the Preface of the book by one of his descendants when the book was being reprinted: In his youth my ancestor Cheng Da Wei was academically gifted, but although he was well versed in scholarly matters, he continued to carry out his profession as a sincere Local Agent, without becoming a scholar.
- He never lagged behind either on the classics or on ancient writings with old style characters, but was particularly gifted in arithmetic.
- In the prime of his life he visited the fairs of Wu and Chu.
- When he came across books that talked about "square fields" or "grain with the husk removed" ...
- he never looked at the price before purchasing them.
- He questioned respectable old men who were experienced in the practice of arithmetic and gradually and indefatigably formed his own collection of difficult problems.Cheng Dawei was not a professional mathematician.
- From the description cited above, one could deduce that he must have traveled widely.
- Also must have been well off since he purchased books without asking the price.
- Again we can see that he was an avid collector of books on mathematics.
- This is borne out by the contents of his work General Source of Computational Methods which is essentially a compilation of problems from earlier works.
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