Seki Takakazu

, also known as , was a Japanese mathematician and author of the Edo period.

Seki laid foundations for the subsequent development of Japanese mathematics, known as ''wasan''. He has been described as "Japan's Newton".

He created a new algebraic notation system and, motivated by astronomical computations, did work on infinitesimal calculus and Diophantine equations. Although he was a contemporary of German polymath mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Leibniz and British polymath physicist and mathematician Isaac Newton, Seki's work was independent. His successors later developed a school dominant in Japanese mathematics until the end of the Edo period.

While it is not clear how much of the achievements of ''wasan'' are Seki's, since many of them appear only in writings of his pupils, some of the results parallel or anticipate those discovered in Europe. For example, he is credited with the discovery of Bernoulli numbers. The resultant and determinant (the first in 1683, the complete version no later than 1710) are attributed to him.

Seki also calculated the value of pi correct to the 10th decimal place, having used what is now called the Aitken's delta-squared process, rediscovered later by Alexander Aitken.

Seki was influenced by Japanese mathematics books such as the Jinkōki. Provided by Wikipedia