The 'Fibonacci' numbers
AI-drafted · awaiting admin review
The sequence 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13… was described by Indian scholars of poetic metre, Virahanka and later Gopala and Hemachandra, centuries before Fibonacci's Liber Abaci of 1202.
India first (well documented)Mathematics & astronomy
Indian claim
The Fibonacci sequence should be called the Virahanka or Hemachandra sequence because Indian scholars found it first.
Evidence for the Indian claim
- Counting the metres of a given length made of short (1 beat) and long (2 beats) syllables gives the sequence; Pingala's work hints at this.
- Virahanka (between the 6th and 8th centuries) stated the rule that each count is the sum of the two before it; his rule survives through Gopala's commentary (c. 1135).
- The Jain scholar Hemachandra (c. 1150) gave the same rule explicitly.
Commonly credited to
Leonardo of Pisa (Fibonacci) introduced the sequence in his rabbit problem in Liber Abaci (1202).
Evidence for the other claim
- Fibonacci's 1202 rabbit problem brought the sequence to Europe, and Édouard Lucas named it after him in the 19th century.
- There is no evidence Fibonacci took the sequence from Indian sources, though he learned Hindu-Arabic numerals in North Africa.
What historians and scientists say
The sequence is documented in India well before 1202. Historians increasingly mention Virahanka, Gopala and Hemachandra alongside Fibonacci.