Viète, François

(1540-1603)

   mathematician

   Born in Fontenay-le-Comte, François Viète was a magistrate for whom mathematics was originally just a pastime. Although regarded by his contemporaries as more of a decipherer than a mathematician, he influenced through his work, especially on equations, many later mathematicians, including pierre de fermât and Isaac Newton and was the founder of algebra. In 1579, he published a table of trigonometric functions (Canon mathematicus), in which he introduced the polar triangle into spherical trigonometry and stated the multiple-angle formulas for sine and cosine in terms of their separate powers. Regarding equations, he demonstrated the relationship between the roots of an algebraic equation and its coefficients. Viète also contributed important numerical methods for approximating the roots of equations (1600) and introduced various symbols of aggregations used as bases in modern mathematics.