On Wed, 06 Nov 2002 11:10:41 +0100, ABX <abx### [at] abxartpl> wrote:
> Lodovico Ferrari was born 2 Feb 1522 and died 5 Oct 1565. So he could not make
> any method for first version of solve_quartic in 1731 as mentioned in
> polysolv.cpp.

1540 - http://turnbull.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/Chronology/1500_1600.html#1540

> Francois Vieta was born 1540 and died 13 Dec 1603. So he could not make any
> method for second version of solve_quartic in 1735 as mentioned in
> polysolv.cpp.

Seems it was not described by Viete itself but ...
  He presented methods for solving equations of second, third and fourth
  degree. He knew the connection between the positive roots of equations and
  the coefficients of the different powers of the unknown quantity. Perhaps it
  is worth noting that the word "coefficient" is actually due to Viete'

http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Viete.html

> Perhaps mentioned 1731 and 1735 are just dates when something was published by
> someone else where their works were described.

More history in
http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/HistTopics/Quadratic_etc_equations.html

ABX

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