Leonardo Fibonacci Biography

Leonardo Fibonacci was born around 1170 A. D. , and died around 1250 A. D. He was born in Pisa, Italy and died there too. Leonardo’s mom was Alessandra, and she died when he was nine. His father was Guglielmo Bonacci, who directed a trading post Bugia, Barbary. As a young boy, Leonardo traveled there to help him, and that’s where he learned about the Hindu-Arabic numeral system. He recognized that arithmetic with Hindu-Arabic numerals is simpler and more efficient that with Roman numerals and so he traveled throughout the Mediterranean world to study under the leading Arab mathematicians of the time. Leonardo returned from his travels around 1200 and in 1202, age 32, he published Liber Abaci. Through the Liber Abaci he introduced Hindu-Arabic numerals to Europe. Liber Abaci is a book that Leonardo Fibonacci wrote in 1202. In it Fibonacci introduces the so-called modus Indorum (method of the Indians), today known as the Arabic numerals. It shows the practical importance of the new numeral system, using lattice multiplication and Egyptian fractions, by applying it to commercial bookkeeping, conversion of weights and measures, the calculation of interest, money-changing, and other applications. Liber Abaci also posed, and solved, a problem involving the growth of a hypothetical population of rabbits based on idealized assumptions. The solution, generation by generation, was a sequence of numbers later known as the Fibonacci numbers. In the Fibonacci sequence of numbers, each number after the first two, is the sum of the previous two numbers. The sequence is 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, etc. The higher the sequence, the closer two consecutive numbers of the sequence divided by each other will approach the golden ratio ( approximately 1 : 1. 618 or 0. 618 : 1). Leonardo became a guest of the Emperor Frederick II, who enjoyed mathematicians and science. In 1240 the Republic of Pisa honored Leonardo by granting him a salary. In the 19th century, a statue of Fibonacci was constructed and erected in Pisa. Today it is located in the western gallery of the Camposanto, which is a cemetery on the Piazza dei Miracoli.