Li Shanlan
Chinese mathematician
Li Shanlan's AcademicInfluence.com Rankings
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Mathematics
Why Is Li Shanlan Influential?
(Suggest an Edit or Addition)According to Wikipedia, Li Shanlan was a Chinese mathematician of the Qing Dynasty. A native of Haining, Zhejiang, he was fascinated by mathematics since childhood, beginning with the Nine Chapters on Mathematical Art. He eked out a living by being a private tutor for some years before fleeing to Shanghai in 1852 to evade the Taiping Rebellion. There he collaborated with Alexander Wylie, Joseph Edkins , and others to translate many Western mathematical works into Chinese, including Elements of Analytical Geometry and the Differential and Integral Calculus by Elias Loomis, Augustus De Morgan's Elements of Algebra, and the last nine volumes of Euclid's Elements , the first six volumes of which having been rendered into Chinese by Matteo Ricci and Xu Guangqi in 1607. With Wylie, he also translated Outlines of Astronomy by John Herschel and coined the Chinese names for many of the low-numbered asteroids.
