Mathematical induction discoverer or inventor Blaise Pascal
In India, early implicit proofs by mathematical induction appear in Bhaskara's "cyclic method".None of these ancient mathematicians, however, explicitly stated the induction hypothesis. Another similar case (contrary to what Vacca has written, as Freudenthal carefully showed) was that of Francesco Maurolico in his Arithmeticorum libri duo (1575), who used the technique to prove that the sum of the first n odd integers is n2.
The earliest rigorous use of induction was by Gersonides (1288–1344). The first explicit formulation of the principle of induction was given by Pascal in his Traité du triangle arithmétique (1665). Another Frenchman, Fermat, made ample use of a related principle: indirect proof by infinite descent.
The induction hypothesis was also employed by the Swiss Jakob Bernoulli, and from then on it became well known. The modern formal treatment of the principle came only in the 19th century, with George Boole, Augustus De Morgan, Charles Sanders Peirce, Giuseppe Peano, and Richard Dedekind.
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