Leonard Of Pisa

, an Italian mathematician, who flourished at the commencement of the thirteenth century, was the first person who brought into Europe the knowledge of the Arabic cyphers and algebra. He travelled into the East for instruction, and being at Bugia, a town in Africa, was taught the Arabic method of keeping accounts, and finding it more convenient and preferable to the European method, he drew up a treatise for the purpose of introducing it into Italy, where it was cultivated with success, and became speedily known to all mathematicians From Italy the knowledge of the Arabic cyphers and algebra was afterwards communicated to the other countries of Europe. He was author of a treatise on surveying,preserved in the Magliabecchi library at Florence.²