Liu Hui, Chinese mathematician

Liu Hui, a Chinese mathematician who lived in the Kingdom of Wei. Kingdom of Wei was a north-central kingdom and one of the three separate kingdoms after the fall of the Han dynasty in the early 3rd century.

Liu Hui not only improves the algorithm of extraction, but also gives an explanation for extracting the square root.

Based on a method he developed, he obtained the most accurate approximation yet of the value of π (=3.1416). About 300 years later, another Chinese mathematician, Zu Chongzi, worked out π to 7 digits (3.1415926).

Liu Hui’s most influential work was his Island Mathematical Manual.  In this book, Liu Hui shows how to use pairs of similar right triangles to measure inaccessible distance.

He completed his commentary on The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art in 263. The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art was mathematical cannon of the 1st century BC that played a similar role in the East to Euclid’s Elements in the West.
Liu Hui, Chinese mathematician