Person: Yasuaki, Aida
Aida Yasuaki was a Japanese mathematician who published about 2000 works.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- The city of Yamagata in which Aida was born and brought up was (and still is) situated in northern Honshu, Japan nearly 300 km north of present day Tokyo.
- In 1769, Aida went to Edo, which has been renamed Tokyo.
- There Aida worked for the shogunate of Tokugawa Ieharu.
- Aida was employed by the shogunate as a civil engineer working on river control and irrigation systems around Edo.
- However, this was not the job that Aida aimed for since ever since he was young his aim had been to become the best mathematician in Japan.
- Aida would have liked to become a pupil of Fujita, for he was one of the leading mathematicians in Japan.
- Aida saw his friendship with Kamiya as means to be accepted by Fujita and asked Kamiya to arrange for him to be introduced to Fujita.
- Indeed Kamiya organised the necessary introductions but Aida was not accepted by Fujita.
- Aida had donated some tablets which contained errors and these had been spotted by Fujita.
- Perhaps Aida was unaware of these errors at the time he sought to become Fujita's pupil.
- Aida now decided to write a work based on the Seiyo sampo yet one which would criticise this work.
- It is not surprising that relations between Aida and Fujita would deteriorate further when Aida published Kaisei sampo, his critical revision of the Seiyo sampo.
- The private feud extended to include other mathematicians when Kamiya, who had lost face by arranging the failed introductions, attacked Aida's Kaisei sampo.
- He also took pupils, including many from the northeastern provinces; these returned to teach in their native regions, where Aida is still revered as a master of mathematics.
- Aida compiled Sampo tensi shinan which appeared in 1788.
- Aida explained the use of algebraic expressions and the construction of equations.
Born 10 February 1747, Yamagata, Japan. Died 26 October 1817, Edo (now Tokyo), Japan.
View full biography at MacTutor
Tags relevant for this person:
Origin Japan
Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0! 
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- non-Github:
- @J-J-O'Connor
- @E-F-Robertson
References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
