Who invented the number 0?

Answer 1

The nr. zero was invented independently in India and
by the Maya. In India a decimal system was used, like
ours, but they used an empty space for zero up to 3rd
Century BC. This was confusing for an empty space was
also used to separate numbers, and so they invented
the dot for a zero. The first evidence for the use of
the symbol that we now know as zero stems from the 7th
century AD. The Maya invented the number zero for
their calendars in the 3rd century AD.
The number zero reached European civilisation through
the Arabs after 800 AD. The Greek and Roman did not
need the number zero for they did their calculations
on an abacus. The name 'zero' comes from the arabic
'sifr'.
(Data from the book "the calender" by D. E. Duncan).

Answer 2

The number 0 was both invented and discovered at different times. Discovered as in treated as a real number. Invented as in used as place holders in numbers such as 10, 500 or 80000. Greeks used a dot instead of a 0 when writing such numbers, because they didn'y know what to do with the empty space. However, the concept of 0 as a number was discovered indepently by many civilizations. India was the first. Mayans also had the concept of 0.

Answer 3

The earliest use of zero was by the Olmec people of Mexico sometime in the 4th century BC. They counted to the base 20, presumably using fingers and toes! This had no influence at all on our present day maths.

The first documented use of a zero that was used alone rather than just a placeholder in a number was by Ptolemy in about AD 130. He probably got the idea from the Babylonians who used it as a placeholder in a sexagesimal numbering system that they used. The Greeks actually debated if zero was actually a number for quite some time.
The Babylonians may have got the idea from India originally but this is unclear.

Answer 4

Well, it's a bit complicated. You can get a good overview at this site: http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/HistTopics/Zero.html

The short answer is that the zero was invented by Indian mathematicians sometime in the 9th century.

Best wishes and God bless.

Answer 5

There are pictures in caves throughout the world that have an empty space with a frame around it. These date back 15 to 20 thousand years ago. Scientists think this blank wall was left deliberately hence the irregular "frame" around. This may represent the concept of "nothing there" or zero.

Answer 6

India invented the zero.an inscription of zero was found in Gujurat India(585-586CE) in Brahmaphuta Siddhanta of Brahma Gupta (7th century CE) the zero is lucidly explained and was rendered into Arabic books (770CE) from there it was carried out to Europe in 8th century however the concept of zero is referred to in Shunya in the early indian sanskrit texts of 4th century BCE and clearly explained in Pingalas Chandah Sutra of the 2nd century which was a (india) indian.

Answer 7

Indians. India Indians.

Answer 8

The concept of zero was first invented by Indians.

Answer 9

An Indian mathematician?

Answer 10

0 (zero) is both a number — or, more precisely, a numeral representing a number — and a numerical digit. Zero is the last digit to be incorporated in most numeral systems. In the English language, zero may also be called nil when a number, o/oh when a numeral, and nought/naught in either context.

Prehistory of zero
By the mid 2nd millennium BC, the Babylonians had a sophisticated sexagesimal positional numeral system. The lack of a positional value (or zero) was indicated by a space between sexagesimal numerals. By 300 BC a punctuation symbol (two slanted wedges) was co-opted as a placeholder in the same Babylonian system. However, "... a tablet found at Kish ... thought to date from around 700 BC, uses three hooks to denote an empty place in the positional notation. Other tablets dated from around the same time use a single hook for an empty place".[2]

The Babylonian placeholder was not a true zero because it was not used alone. Nor was it used at the end of a number. Thus numbers like 2 and 120 (2×60), 3 and 180 (3×60), 4 and 240 (4×60), etc. looked the same because the larger numbers lacked a final sexagesimal placeholder. Only context could differentiate them.

Records show that the ancient Greeks seemed unsure about the status of zero as a number: they asked themselves "How can nothing be something?", leading to interesting philosophical and, by the Medieval period, religious arguments about the nature and existence of zero and the vacuum. The paradoxes of Zeno of Elea depend in large part on the uncertain interpretation of zero. (The ancient Greeks even questioned that 1 was a number.)

In ancient India, the linguist Panini (5th century BC) used the null (zero or shoonya) operator in the Ashtadhyayi, his algebraic grammar of the Sanskrit language. Another early use of something like zero by the Indian scholar Pingala (circa 5th-3rd century BC), implied at first glance by his use of binary numbers, is only the modern binary representation using 0 and 1 applied to Pingala's binary system, which used short and long syllables (the latter equal in length to two short syllables),[3] making it similar to Morse code. Nevertheless, he and other Indian scholars at the time used the Sanskrit word shunya (the origin of the word zero after a series of transliterations and a literal translation) to refer to zero or void

History of zero
The late Olmec people of south-central Mexico began to use a zero digit (a shell glyph) in the New World possibly by the 4th century BC but certainly by 40 BC, within a vigesimal (base-20) positional numeral system. It became an integral part of Maya numerals, but did not influence Old World numeral systems.

By 130, Ptolemy, influenced by Hipparchus and the Babylonians, was using a symbol for zero (a small circle with a long overbar) within a sexagesimal numeral system otherwise using alphabetic Greek numerals. Because it was used alone, not just as a placeholder, this Hellenistic zero was perhaps the first documented use of a number zero in the Old World. However, the positions were usually limited to the fractional part of a number (called minutes, seconds, thirds, fourths, etc.)—they were not used for the integral part of a number. In later Byzantine manuscripts of his Syntaxis Mathematica (Almagest), the Hellenistic zero had morphed into the Greek letter omicron (otherwise meaning 70).

Another zero was used in tables alongside Roman numerals by 525 (first known use by Dionysius Exiguus), but as a word, nulla meaning nothing, not as a symbol. When division produced zero as a remainder, nihil, also meaning nothing, was used. These medieval zeros were used by all future medieval computists (calculators of Easter). An isolated use of their initial, N, was used in a table of Roman numerals by Bede or a colleague about 725, a zero symbol.

In 498, Indian mathematician and astronomer Aryabhata stated that "Stanam stanam dasa gunam" or place to place in ten times in value, which may be the origin of the modern decimal based place value notation; his positional number system included a zero in his letter code for numerals (which allowed him to express numbers as words) in his mathematical astronomy text Aryabhatiya.[5] In the Bakhshali Manuscript, whose date is uncertain but which is believed by some scholars to pre-date Aryabhata, zero is symbolized and used as a number; if the early dating is accepted, it would also predate Brahmagupta.

The first unambiguous use of a decimal zero and the rules governing its use appear in Brahmagupta's Brahmasphuta Siddhanta, along with consideration of negative numbers and the algebraic rules discussed below. By the 7th century, when Brahmagupta lived, some concept of zero had clearly reached Cambodia, and documentation shows the idea later spreading to China and the Islamic world.