Nicolas Chuquet

Nicolas Chuquet, born in 1445, was a pioneering French mathematician and writer who made significant contributions to the field of mathematics. He is best known for inventing his own notation for algebraic concepts and exponentiation, and he may have been the first to recognize zero and negative numbers as exponents.

In 1484, Chuquet authored an article titled Triparty en la science des nombres, which remained unpublished during his lifetime. However, much of his work was later copied without attribution by Estienne de La Roche in his 1520 textbook, l'Arismetique. It wasn't until the 1870s that scholar Aristide Marre discovered Chuquet's manuscript, which was published in 1880, revealing the original notes in de la Roche's handwriting.

Chuquet's manuscript introduced a systematic naming convention for large numbers, including terms such as million, billion, trillion, and beyond. He described a number divided into groups of six digits, explaining that a million is worth a thousand thousand units, a billion is worth a thousand thousand millions, and so forth. His innovative approach to naming large numbers is sometimes referred to as the Chuquet system.

In 1514, the term Milliard was introduced by Budaeus for ten to the power of twelve, which gained popularity through Jacques Peletier du Mans around 1550. This term eventually evolved into the modern Long scale system, which is sometimes called the Chuquet-Peletier system. Over time, different systems emerged, with the short scale becoming prevalent in English-speaking countries, while France and much of Europe continued to use the Chuquet-Peletier-based long-scale system for large numbers.