{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Incredible India Travel | Social Impact & Culture Tours","title":"Madhava: The Kerala Mathematician Who Invented Calculus 200 Years Before Newton and Whose Work May Have Reached Europe Through a Spy Network of Jesuit Missionaries","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":1323,"description":"In 1666 Isaac Newton invented calculus.This is what most of the world was taught and what most of the world still believes.There is a problem with this version of events.A mathematician in Kerala had already done it. In the 14th century. And the Cambridge University Professor of Mathematics George Gheverghese Joseph has stated that the priority of Kerala developments in the calculus over that of Newton and Leibniz is now beyond doubt.His name was Madhava of Sangamagrama. He was born around 1340 CE in a small town near what is now Thrissur in Kerala. He died around 1425 CE, more than two centuries before Newton was born. And the mathematical tradition he founded, the Kerala School of Astronomy and Mathematics, produced infinite series expansions for sine, cosine, tangent and arctangent that are today formally known by the names of the European mathematicians who rediscovered them centuries after Madhava had already solved them.Madhava-Newton. Madhava-Leibniz. Madhava-Gregory. Madhava-Taylor.The names that appear in every university mathematics syllabus worldwide contain the name of a 14th-century Kerala mathematician as the first author. And almost nobody outside the mathematical history community knows this.But the story does not end with the mathematics. It ends with a question historians of science are still actively debating. Did the Jesuit missionaries who were active on the Kerala coast in the 15th and 16th centuries, trading from the ancient port of Muziris near Madhava's own birthplace, carry the Kerala calculus back to Europe in their manuscripts and letters? Did Newton and Leibniz build on mathematical foundations that an Indian mathematician had already laid?The answer is not yet proven. But the circumstantial evidence is extraordinary.What You Will Discover in This EpisodeThe complete story of Madhava of Sangamagrama, born around 1340 CE in Sangamagrama, present-day Irinjalakuda in the Thrissur district of Kerala, and how he founded the Kerala School...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/eWrZ3doNBWF40S0S56sC17IDwfhLRtHiDkqKOrNCvtA/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS85Yjg5/Y2Q3ODM2NzZkOTcz/NGJiMWMwMDEzMTFl/YjI3NC5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}