Yang Hui

Yang Hui (simplified Chinese: 杨辉; traditional Chinese: 楊輝; pinyin: Yáng Huī; ca. 1238–1298), courtesy name Qianguang (謙光), was a Chinese mathematician and writer of the Southern Song and Yuan dynasties. He came from Qiantang, which is now known as Hangzhou in Zhejiang.

Yang Hui made important contributions to mathematics. He worked with magic squares, magic circles, and the binomial theorem. He is most famous for presenting what we now call Yang Hui's triangle. This triangle is the same as Pascal's triangle, which was discovered earlier by another mathematician named Jia Xian (Jia Xian).

Yang Hui lived at the same time as another well-known Chinese mathematician, Qin Jiushao (Qin Jiushao). Together, their work helped advance mathematical knowledge in China during a very interesting time in history.

Written work

Yang Hui wrote important books about mathematics. In one book from 1261 AD, he showed the earliest known picture of Pascal’s triangle, a pattern that helps solve math problems. He learned this method from an earlier mathematician named Jia Xian.

Around 1275 AD, Yang published two more books. In these, he described special patterns of numbers called magic circles and magic squares. He also worked on geometry, proving ideas similar to those of the ancient Greek mathematician Euclid. Yang was good at using decimal numbers in his calculations, which made his math methods more precise.

The Yang-Hui Award

The Yang-Hui Award is given to mathematicians and scientists who have made important contributions to their fields. It has been awarded to several researchers for their work, including studies in special math theories and modeling diseases.