carl frederich gauss Archives - Math and Multimedia

Complex Numbers and their Properties

January 28, 2012 GB High School Mathematics

Imaginary numbers as we have discussed in Tuesday’s post are numbers of the form bi where $b$ is a real number and $i = \sqrt{-1}$ . The term imaginary as (opposed to real) was first used by Rene Descartes, the mathematician who invented Coordinate Geometry — the Cartesian plane in particular. Leonhard Euler was the one who introduced the symbol $i$ for $\sqrt{-1}$ .

Leonhard Euler

Gerolamo Cardano, a pioneer in probability, was the one who suggested the use of numbers of the form $a + bi$ where $a$ and $b$ are real numbers and $i = \sqrt{-1}$ . Numbers of this form were named complex numbers by Carl Frederich Gauss.The real part of $a + bi$ is $a$ and the imaginary part is bi. » Read more

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