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One of the first algebraists to accept negative numbers was... who occasionally placed a negative number by itself on one side of an equation. But he did not accept negative roots.... gave clear definitions for negative numbers. Stevin used positive and negative coefficients in equations and also accepted negative roots. In his L'Invention nouvelle en l'algèbre ,... placed negative numbers on a par with positive numbers and gave both roots of a quadratic equation, even when both were negative. Both Girard and Harriot used the minus sign for the operation of subtraction and for negative numbers. (en) |
