Who invented the number zero?

Answer 1

A very worthy question. The most commonly accepted answer is that the Indians were the first to invent the concept of zero. However, some historians would insist that the Babylonians, the Mayans or even the Chinese had a hand in this.

The symbol '0' that we use nowadays is undisputedly an all-Indian affair. It is somewhat paradoxical that while zero is the first number (in a way) in our numeral system, it was the last to be invented. The Romans and the Greeks failed, surprisingly, to make the same quantum leap as the Indians and it was through the Arabs that this Indian concept of 'zero' first dawned upon the Western civilizations.

The Indians used zero as some-sort of a space filler. To distinguish between numbers, such as 5 and 500, the Indians add two zeros after 5. (At first, the Indians used empty space after 5, so five hundred will look like 5 . But this gets terribly confusing.) The Italian mathematician Fibonacci was the first to popularize the concept of zero in the West. Before that, the Western word had been using the Roman numerals which did not require the concept of zero.

Answer 2

i have heard people saying zero was invented by Indians....but I'm not sure as who the person is..

Answer 3

Indian mathematician Aryabhatta.

Answer 4

In the various forms of numerals used in ancient India,
and in later European and Oriental forms, the zero is
represented by a small circle or by a dot:

Names of Zero
Hindu sunya, meaning "void" or "empty"
Arabic sifr, meaning "vacant"
Roman cifra
Latin zephirum or zephyrum
changes: zeuro, zepiro, cifre
English zero and cipher

Other Forms: naught, tziphra, sipos, tsiphron, rota,
circulus, galgal, theca, null, and figura nihili

Since the earliest form of the Hindu symbol was
commonly used in inscriptions and manuscripts in order
to mark a blank, it was called sunya, meaning "void" or
"empty." This word passed over into the Arabic as sifr,
meaning "vacant." This was transliterated in about 1200
into Latin with the sound but not the sense being kept,
resulting in zephirum or zephyrum. Various progressive
changes of these forms, including zeuero, zepiro, zero,
cifra, and cifre, led to the development of our words
"zero" and "cipher." The double meaning of the word
"cipher" today - referring either to the zero symbol or
to any of the digits - was not in the original Hindu.
In early English and American schools the term
"ciphering" referred to doing sums or other
computations in arithmetic.

One might think that once a place-value number system
came into existence then the 0 as an empty place
indicator is a necessary idea, yet the Babylonians had
a place-value number system without this feature for
over 1000 years. Moreover there is absolutely no
evidence that the Babylonians felt that there was any
problem with the ambiguity which existed. Remarkably,
original texts survive from the era of Babylonian
mathematics. The Babylonians wrote on tablets of
unbaked clay, using cuneiform writing. The symbols were
pressed into soft clay tablets with the slanted edge of
a stylus and so had a wedge-shaped appearance (and
hence the name cuneiform). Many tablets from around
1700 BC survive and we can read the original texts. Of
course their notation for numbers was quite different
from ours (and not based on 10 but on 60) but to
translate into our notation they would not distinguish
between 2106 and 216 (the context would have to show
which was intended). It was not until around 400 BC
that the Babylonians put two wedge symbols into the
place where we would put zero to indicate which was
meant, 216 or 21 '' 6. According to a Babylonian legend
the original shape of the zero was said to be derived
from Buddha. When he was meditating he formed a
circular shape with his index fingers and thumbs
meaning void. By doing this he was saying that in
prayer you should make your mind blank. This void was
the same idea as the blank space between numbers. So in
order to be able to define the number of blanks they
used the symbol in the shape of a 0.
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.
uk/~history/HistTopics/Zero.html

The first notions of zero as a number and its uses have
been found in ancient Mathematical treatise from India
and thus India is correctly related to the immensely
important mathematical discovery of the numeral zero.
This concept, combined with the place-value system of
enumeration, became the basis for a classical era
renaissance in Indian mathematics. Indians began using
zero both as a number in the place-value system of
numerals as well as to denote an empty place (place
holder).

Earliest known precise celestial calculations: As
argued by James Q. Jacobs, Aryabhata, an Indian
Mathematician (c. 500AD) accurately calculated
celestial constants like earth's rotation per solar
orbit, days per solar orbit, days per lunar orbit. In
fact, to the best of my knowledge, no source from prior
to the 18th century had more accurate results on the
values of these constants! Click here for details.
Aryabhata's 499 AD computation of pi as 3.1416 (real
value 3.1415926...) and the length of a solar year as
365.358 days were also extremely accurate by the
standards of the next thousand years.

Binary System of number representation: A Mathematician
named Pingala (c. 100BC) developed a system of binary
enumeration convertible to decimal numerals. He
described the system in his book called
Chandahshaastra. The system he described is quite
similar to that of Leibnitz, who was born in the 17th
century.

Invention of various modern mathematical series leading
to the discovery of calculus: In the southern state of
Kerala, mathematician Madhava discovered the
mathematical series for sin x, cos x, and arctan x
circa 1400AD. Colin Maclaurin re-discovered the series
in the 1700s. Jyesthadeva wrote a commentary called
Yukti-Bhasa in Malayalam, the regional language of
Kerala, around 1550.

The word "Algorithm": Al-Khwarizmi, an eminent 9th
century Arab scholar, played important roles in
importing knowledge on arithematic and algebra from
India to the Arabs. In his work, De numero indorum
(Concerning the Hindu Art of Reckoning), it was based
presumably on an Arabic translation of Brahmagupta
where he gave a full account of the Hindu numerals
which was the first to expound the system with its
digits 0,1,2,3,...,9 and decimal place value which was
a fairly recent arrival from India.
http://www.cerc.utexas.edu/~jay/anc.html#zero

Answer 5

It is Babylonian Guys Uh Duh
http://www.andrews.edu/~calkins/math/biograph/biozero.htm

Answer 6

The Indians or the Arabians. There's a messy case going on.

Answer 7

the number zero was known in ancient india , it was known to d great indian mathematician aryabhatta

Answer 8

I think it was Sir Isaac newton when he subtracted apples from bananas and got nothing left.

Answer 9

http://ksnn.larc.nasa.gov/resources/resources.cfm?unit=thezero&concept=math&enterprise=&title=Where+did+the+idea+of+zero+come+from?

Answer 10

INDIANS