Person: Baudhayana

Baudhayana was the author of one of the earliest Sulbasutras: documents containing some of the earliest Indian mathematics.

Undoubtedly he wrote the Sulbasutra to provide rules for religious rites and it would appear an almost certainty that Baudhayana himself would be a Vedic priest.
It is clear from the writing that Baudhayana, as well as being a priest, must have been a skilled craftsman.
Below we give one or two details of Baudhayana's Sulbasutra, which contained three chapters, which is the oldest which we possess and, it would be fair to say, one of the two most important.
The Sulbasutra of Baudhayana contains geometric solutions (but not algebraic ones) of a linear equation in a single unknown.
Several values of π occur in Baudhayana's Sulbasutra since when giving different constructions Baudhayana uses different approximations for constructing circular shapes.
An interesting, and quite accurate, approximate value for √2 is given in Chapter 1 verse 61 of Baudhayana's Sulbasutra.
Why then did Baudhayana feel that he had to go for a better approximation?

Born about 800 BC, India. Died about 740 BC, India.

View full biography at MacTutor

Ancient Indian, Origin India

Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0!

O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive