A member of Frederick II's court, John of Palermo, posed several questions based on Arab mathematical works for Fibonacci to solve. įibonacci was a guest of Emperor Frederick II, who enjoyed mathematics and science. In 1202, he completed the Liber Abaci ( Book of Abacus or The Book of Calculation), which popularized Hindu–Arabic numerals in Europe. He soon realised the many advantages of the Hindu-Arabic system, which, unlike the Roman numerals used at the time, allowed easy calculation using a place-value system. įibonacci travelled around the Mediterranean coast, meeting with many merchants and learning about their systems of doing arithmetic. Fibonacci travelled with him as a young boy, and it was in Bugia (Algeria) where he was educated that he learned about the Hindu–Arabic numeral system.

Guglielmo directed a trading post in Bugia (Béjaïa), in modern-day Algeria. Biographyįibonacci was born around 1170 to Guglielmo, an Italian merchant and customs official. įibonacci popularized the Indo–Arabic numeral system in the Western world primarily through his composition in 1202 of Liber Abaci ( Book of Calculation) and also introduced Europe to the sequence of Fibonacci numbers, which he used as an example in Liber Abaci. However, even earlier, in 1506, a notary of the Holy Roman Empire, Perizolo mentions Leonardo as 'Lionardo Fibonacci'. The name he is commonly called, Fibonacci, was made up in 1838 by the Franco-Italian historian Guillaume Libri and is short for filius Bonacci ('son of Bonacci'). 1240–50), also known as Leonardo Bonacci, Leonardo of Pisa, or Leonardo Bigollo Pisano ('Leonardo the Traveller from Pisa' ), was an Italian mathematician from the Republic of Pisa, considered to be 'the most talented Western mathematician of the Middle Ages'. Popularizing the Hindu–Arabic numeral system in Europeįibonacci ( / ˌ f ɪ b ə ˈ n ɑː tʃ i/ also US: / ˌ f iː b-/, Italian: c.

Why is the fibonacci sequence in nature