Fibonacci ( c. 1170 – c. 1240–50), also known as Leonardo Bonacci, Leonardo of Pisa, or Leonardo Bigollo Pisano (‘Leonardo the Traveller from Pisa’), was an Italian mathematician from Pisa. He popularized the Indo-Arabic numeral system in the Western world primarily through his composition in 1202 of Book of Calculation (Liber Abaci). He also introduced Europe to the sequence of Fibonacci numbers which he used as an example in Liber Abaci.
The Fibonacci numbers, commonly denoted Fn , form the Fibonacci sequence, in which each number is the sum of the two preceding ones. The sequence commonly starts from 0 and 1, although some authors omit the initial terms and start the sequence from 1 and 1 or from 1 and 2. Starting from 0 and 1, the next few values in the sequence are:
0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, …
The Fibonacci numbers were first described as early as 200 BC in a work by the Indian poet and mathematician Pingala on enumerating possible patterns of Sanskrit poetry formed from syllables of two lengths.
Translated by L. E Sigler.
