Nicolas Chuquet
Nicolas Chuquet (born 1445 (some sources say c. 1455) in Paris, France; died 1488 (some sources say c. 1500) in Lyon, France) was a French mathematician whose great work, Triparty en la science des nombres was unpublished in his lifetime. Most of it, however, was copied without attribution by Estienne de La Roche in his 1520 textbook, Larismetique. In the 1870s, scholar A Aristide Marre discovered Chuquet's manuscript and published it in 1880. The manuscript contained notes in de la Roche's handwriting.
Chuquet's thinking was brilliant and far ahead of its time. He invented his own notation for algebraic concepts and exponentiation. He may have been the first mathematician to recognize zero and negative numbers as exponents.
His book shows a huge number divided into groups of six digits, and in a short passage he states that the groups can be called "million, the second mark byllion, the third mark tryllion, the fourth quadrillion, the fifth quyillion, the sixth sixlion, the seventh septyllion, the eighth ottyllion, the ninth nonyllion and so on with others as far as you wish to go." Because of this, he is sometimes credited as the inventor of the modern names for large numbers.
This is an oversimplification. The word million had been in use centuries prior to Chuquet. In 1475, Jacques Pelletier du Mans took a system based on powers of 106, and added the term "milliard" for 109. This system was used in England and Germany and part of the rest of Europe, but in France and in the USA a different system became established where the term billion signifies 109. This system is sometimes referred to as the Chuquet-Pelletier system.
What is undeniable is that Chuquet was the originator (in his work Triparty en la science des nombres) of the first published system (published, not by Chuquet, but by Estienne de la Roche) of names for large numbers by combining Latin-derived prefixes with the suffix -illion.
| Base 10
| Systematics
| Chuquet
| Pelletier
| American or
Short Scale
| Base 16
| Prefix
|
| 10 0
| Million 0
| | <center> unit
| <center> unit
| 16 0
| <center> [unit]
|
| 10 3
| Million 0.5
| <center> thousand
| <center> thousand
| <center> thousand
| 16 2.5
| <center> kilo
|
| 10 6
| Million 1
| <center> Million
| <center> Million
| <center> Million
| 16 5
| <center> Mega
|
| 10 9
| Million 1.5
| <center> thousand million
| <center> Milliard
| <center> Billion
| 16 7.5
| <center> Giga
|
| 10 12
| Million 2
| <center> Billion
| <center> Billion
| <center> Trillion
| 16 10
| <center> Tera
|
| 10 15
| Million 2.5
| <center> thousand billion
| <center> Billiard
| <center> Quadrillion
| 16 12.5
| <center> Peta
|
| 10 18
| Million 3
| <center> Trillion
| <center> Trillion
| <center> Quintillion
| 16 15
| <center> Exa
|
| 10 21
| Million 3.5
| <center> thousand trillion
| <center> Trilliard
| <center> Sextillion
| 16 17.5
| <center> Zetta
|
| 10 24
| Million 4
| <center> Quadrillion
| <center> Quadrillion
| <center> Septillion
| 16 20
| <center> Yotta
|
See Also
