ABSTRACT
Diophantus of Alexandria was a Greek mathematician who lived in Alexandria, Egypt, probably from sometime between 200 and 214 AD to sometime between 284 and 298 AD. Diophantus’s age of 84 years can be determined from the solution to a linear equation given in an inscription (a mathematical poem) on his tomb. The English translation is as follows:
God vouchsafed that he should be a boy for sixth part of his life; when a twelfth was added, his cheeks acquired a beard; He kindled for him the light of marriage after a seventh, and in the fifth years after his marriage he granted him a son. Alas! Late-begotten and miserable child, when he had reached the measure of half his father’s life, the chill grave took him. After consoling his grief by his science of numbers for four years, he reached the end of his life.
