Other Italian Language and Literature Commons^™

Trattato Dell’Alcibra Amuchabile (Anonimo): A Guided Translation, Gary Towsley, Olympia Nicodemi

Geneseo Authors

The Trattato dell’Alcibra Amuchabile is a pre-modern algebra text from c. 1365. It is written in a Tuscan dialect of Italian and is situated in the abbacus school tradition, schools that taught the mathematics needed for a mercantile society. Like all the algebra written in Italy at the time, it was inherited from al-Khwarizmi and, like his, written with no symbols—no x’s, y’s, plus signs, etc. It was what is sometimes called “rhetorical algebra.”  There is very little source  material available in English from this important era in the history of algebra. This book helps fill that gap. …