c. 60-c. 100

Roman Syrian Mathematician and Philosopher

In a play by the satirist Lucian, one character says to another, "You calculate like Nicomachus." The latter, a philosopher of the neo-Pythagorean school, is best remembered for his Arithmetike eisagoge, or Introduction to Arithmetic, a highly influential if rather unusual mathematical text.

Gerasa is now the town of Jerash, Jordan, then part of Roman Syria, and it is likely that Nicomachus was ethnically related to the peoples of this area while being thoroughly Romanized in terms of culture and speech. It can be inferred that he studied in a school that espoused the ideas of Pythagoras (c. 580-c. 500 B.C.), because those ideas pervade his Introduction to Arithmetic.

In the latter text, Nicomachus examined odd, even, prime, composite, and perfect numbers. He also presented an interesting theorem in which he showed that by adding consecutive odd...