Seki Takakazu

c. 1642 – 5 December 1708

Seki Takakazu, also known as Seki Kōwa, was a Japanese mathematician of the Edo period, often called Japan's greatest mathematician and the founder of the wasan (Japanese mathematics) tradition. Working independently of European mathematics, he developed methods equivalent to determinants and discovered Bernoulli numbers before Jacob Bernoulli's work was published. His school of mathematics dominated Japanese mathematics for generations.

Comparing
Compare

Lived at the same time

Well-documented people whose lives overlapped with Seki Takakazu.

Life events

Born into a samurai family, probably in Fujioka
c. 1642

Seki was born around 1642, likely in Fujioka in Kōzuke Province (modern Gunma Prefecture), into a samurai warrior family, and was adopted by the Seki family as a child.

Source: en.wikipedia.org
Birth ✓
Studied mathematics largely as a self-taught prodigy
c. 1655

Seki is said to have taught himself mathematics from an early age, studying Japanese and Chinese mathematical texts such as Zhu Shijie's Introduction to Computational Studies.

Education ?
Served the Kōfu domain as an accountant and examiner
c. 1665

Seki served Tokugawa Tsunashige and then Tokugawa Tsunatoyo, lord of the Kōfu domain, working as a bureau examiner of accounts.

Source: en.wikipedia.org
Career ✓
Published Hatsubi Sanpō
1674

Seki published Hatsubi Sanpō, his only book issued in his lifetime, solving unresolved problems posed by Sawaguchi Kazuyuki and demonstrating his new algebraic methods.

Source: en.wikipedia.org
Achievement ✓
Developed a theory of resultants and determinants
c. 1683

In manuscripts of the early 1680s, Seki developed elimination methods for systems of equations involving expressions equivalent to determinants, a decade before Leibniz's work on the subject.

Source: en.wikipedia.org
Achievement ✓
Discovered Bernoulli numbers
c. 1700

Seki studied sums of powers and discovered the sequence later known as Bernoulli numbers, published posthumously in Katsuyō Sanpō, before Jacob Bernoulli's Ars Conjectandi appeared.

Source: en.wikipedia.org
Achievement ✓
Became a shogunate samurai when his lord became shogun heir
1704

When Tokugawa Tsunatoyo entered Edo Castle as heir to the shogun in 1704, Seki became a direct retainer of the Tokugawa shogunate in Edo.

Source: en.wikipedia.org
Career ✓
Died in Edo
5 December 1708

Seki died in Edo (modern Tokyo); his manuscripts were collected and published by his disciples, and his school led by Takebe Katahiro carried on his mathematical tradition.

Source: en.wikipedia.org
Death ✓