On the tomb of Diophantus, there is an inscription that allegedly summarizes his life through a mathematical riddle, translated into English as follows:
Mathematician Diophantus.
O traveler, this is the eternal resting place of Diophantus.
If you wish to know how his life was, you should take the effort to decipher the following numbers:
1/6 of his life was a happy childhood.
After 1/12 of his life, he began to grow a beard.
After another 1/7 of his life, he got married.
Five years later, he rejoiced at the birth of his first son.
However, fate only allowed his son to live exactly 1/2 of his father’s age.
After his son passed away, he mourned for 4 years, and then he closed his eyes for the last time.
For a long time, people have decoded the content of the inscription by setting up a simple algebraic equation. Let x be the age of Diophantus, and we have the neat equation:
x = x/6 + x/12 + x/7 + 5 + x/2 + 4
It is easy to find the solution x = 84, meaning that Diophantus lived to be 84 years old. Accordingly, Diophantus got married at the age of 24 and had a son when he was 37 years old; that son lived to be 42 years old.
Cover of Diophantus’s Algebra published in 1670, translated into Latin.
In a book translated from Chinese literature, the book Mathematics (Science and Technical Publishing House, Hanoi 1993; page 88) states: “In ancient Greece, there was a mathematician named Diophantus (~325 BC), but no book records his age, and no one knows about his life.”
In reality, Diophantus (in French) or Diophantus of Alexandria was a renowned mathematician who lived and worked at the University of Alexandria in the early AD period, not BC. Flipping through any history of mathematics, Diophantus is mentioned alongside a series of notable figures from the ancient Greek school of Alexandria, which is now part of Egypt.
Although the exact year of his death is not known, based on many discovered sources, experts in the history of mathematics have estimated that Diophantus was born in 325 and died in 410. This timeframe is still recognized in current dictionaries, such as Petit Larousse Illustré 1973 (page 1295). If so, Diophantus lived to be 85 years old.
He is known as the “father” of algebra, although he has been described as a “book burner” because he did not share the answers to the questions he posed.
The details of Diophantus’s life are unclear, but we know that he wrote several books on algebra, including the “Arithmetica”. This collection has become an important document in the history of mathematics and is considered one of the earliest works on algebra.
The “Arithmetica” consists of 13 books, in which Diophantus solved number theory problems using algebraic methods. This made him the first mathematician to use algebra for number theory.
One of Diophantus’s most significant contributions to algebra is the Diophantine equation. This equation poses a problem related to number theory and algebra and has become an important part of this field of mathematics. Diophantus was also the first to introduce alphabetic symbols into algebra.
In addition to being a mathematician, Diophantus is known as a poet and philosopher. However, his works have been lost or destroyed, so information about his other activities is quite limited.
