ABSTRACT
Rene Descartes, the French mathematician and philosopher, devised imaginary terms in complex numbers. One of the most distinguished mathematicians in history, Carl Friedrich Gauss, suggested the use of complex numbers instead of imaginary numbers. Gauss published a work on geometric representation of complex numbers as points in a plane. He also published the first proof of the fundamental theorem of algebra. Great controversy surrounded the acceptance of complex numbers in algebra and analysis in 1770, by 1830, the geometry of complex numbers was accepted by Gauss and then by the rest of the mathematics world. Pierre Alphonse Laurent developed his Laurent series around 1843. Karl Weierstrass of Germany devised complex analysis on a rigorous foundation. Geoge Bernhard Riemann introduced derivatives of functions of complex variables. His work and that of Cauchy led to naming of the Cauchy-Riemann equation that specifies conditions for a complex function to be differentiable at a point.
