If there’s one thing I learned in high school, it’s that math was created by white men. Or at least, that’s how it seemed at the time. Names like Pythagoras, Pascal, and Fibonacci loomed large in my textbooks as if they had singlehandedly invented the building blocks of mathematics. No mention of where these ideas actually came from or the long, complex history behind them—just the neat, tidy story of how white men had supposedly figured it all out.
Take the Fibonacci sequence. I remember being fascinated by its elegance: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13…
Each number builds on the two before it, showing up in nature from sunflower spirals to the curves of seashells. It felt almost magical.
And it was all thanks to this Italian mathematician, Leonardo Fibonacci—or so I was told.
But here’s the thing: Fibonacci didn’t invent it. By the time he wrote about the sequence in Liber Abaci, it was already centuries old.
Uncovering the True Origins of Mathematical Ideas
By the time Fibonacci wrote about the sequence, it had already been described in ancient India. Around 200 BCE, Indian mathematicians like Pingala were using it to analyze patterns in Sanskrit poetry. Later, Virahanka and Hemachandra expanded on it, applying it to combinatorics and other mathematical problems.
This wasn’t just a random observation—it was part of a rich and evolving tradition of mathematical thought.
So how did Fibonacci’s name get attached to it? The answer, as is often the case, is timing. Fibonacci’s Liber Abaci wasn’t just about the sequence; it was an introduction to the Hindu-Arabic numeral system, which he encountered during his travels in North Africa. By bringing these ideas to Europe, Fibonacci made them accessible to a new audience, and in the process, his name became forever linked to a concept he didn’t create.
I don’t blame Fibonacci for this—he wasn’t trying to take credit for the work of others. But the fact that his name stuck, while the names of Pingala, Virahanka, and Hemachandra faded into obscurity, says a lot about how credit is distributed in history.
It’s not just about who made the discovery—it’s about who told the story.
Reclaiming the Stories of Forgotten Pioneers
If we’re serious about recognizing the true pioneers of mathematics, we should go beyond just retelling their stories—we should honor them in the way we name the concepts they created. Imagine learning about the Pingala Sequence instead of the Fibonacci sequence, or studying Yang Hui’s Triangle in place of Pascal’s.
These small but significant changes would give overdue credit to the mathematicians who first discovered these ideas:
• Rename the Pythagorean Theorem to Baudhayana’s Theorem, after the Indian scholar Baudhayana.
• Replace Newton’s Binomial Theorem with Khayyam’s Binomial Expansion, in honor of Persian mathematician Omar Khayyam.
• Honor Brahmagupta’s Formula instead of Heron’s Formula for the area of a triangle.
These aren’t just symbolic changes—they’re a way to correct the historical record and emphasize the global nature of human innovation.
Renaming isn’t about erasing anyone from history. It’s about restoring balance to a narrative that has long skewed toward a select few. By doing so, we open up new ways for students and scholars alike to see mathematics not as the work of a single culture, but as a shared achievement that connects us all.
The Power of a Fuller History
Books like The Secret Lives of Numbers: A Hidden History of Math’s Unsung Trailblazers by Kate Kitagawa and Timothy Revell shed light on these overlooked contributions. The book dives into the rich, multicultural origins of mathematics, unearthing stories of mathematicians who were pushed to the margins of history.
It highlights figures like Pingala and Al-Khwarizmi, whose work laid the foundation for much of what we take for granted in modern math, and explores how cultural biases have shaped the way these achievements are remembered—or forgotten.
What’s powerful about The Secret Lives of Numbers is how it reframes math not as a series of isolated discoveries, but as a deeply interconnected, global endeavor. The book doesn’t shy away from the uncomfortable truth that many of the mathematical ideas we associate with Western figures had roots elsewhere.
It’s a reminder that restoring these stories isn’t just about fairness—it’s about painting a fuller, richer picture of the world we live in.
A Shared Legacy
The next time someone gushes about the Fibonacci sequence, I hope they think of Pingala. It’s a reminder of just how rich and interconnected the history of math really is. Math doesn’t belong to one culture or one group of people—it belongs to all of us. And its history deserves to reflect that.
The Fibonacci sequence is beautiful. But for me, it’s even more beautiful when I know the whole story.
ChatGPT writing note: I left the final edit to ChatGPT on this one. I think it did a pretty good job!
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