Diophantus of Alexandria

Diophantus lived and taught in the intellectual circle of Alexandria during the 3rd century CE. Prior to his work, arithmetic problems were described in cumbersome verbal rhetoric; Diophantus introduced concise symbolic notation for unknowns, powers, and operational signs in algebraic equations.

His 13-book treatise *Arithmetica* solved indeterminate polynomial equations seeking integer and rational solutions (Diophantine analysis). It was in the margin of a Latin translation of Diophantus's *Arithmetica* that Pierre de Fermat famously penned his celebrated Last Theorem in 1637.