Cheng Dawei

Cheng Dawei (1533 to 1606), also written Ch'eng Ta-wei, was a Chinese mathematician and writer, known mainly as the author of the Suanfa Tongzong, the General Source of Computational Methods, and described as the most illustrious Chinese arithmetician. Almost all that is known of his life comes from a preface written by one of his descendants for a reprint, which says that he was gifted in arithmetic from youth, worked as a local agent without becoming a scholar, visited the fairs of Wu and Chu, and bought books on square fields and hulled grain without asking the price. He was not a professional mathematician but an avid collector of mathematical books, and he questioned experienced old men about arithmetic to build up his own collection of difficult problems. The General Source of Computational Methods, first published in 1592, is essentially a general arithmetic for the abacus and a compilation of problems from earlier works. It contains 595 problems in twelve chapters, was republished many times, and reached a vast popular audience, with its versified formulas still recited in China in modern times.