Adelard of Bath
Adelard of Bath (; 1080 1152 AD) was a 12th-century English natural philosopher. He is known both for his original works and for translating many important Arabic and Greek scientific works of astrology, astronomy, philosophy and mathematics into Latin from Arabic versions, which were then introduced to Western Europe. He is known as one of the first to introduce the Arabic numeral system to Europe. He stands at the convergence of three intellectual schools: the traditional learning of French schools, the Greek culture of Southern Italy, and the Arabic science of the East.
History of combinatorics
Combinatorics came to Europe in the 13th century through mathematicians Leonardo Fibonacci and Jordanus de Nemore. Fibonacci's Liber Abaci introduced many of the Arabian and Indian ideas to Europe, including that of the Fibonacci numbers. Jordanus was the first person to arrange the binomial coefficients in a triangle, as he did in proposition 70 of "De Arithmetica". This was also done in the Middle East in 1265, and China around 1300. Today, this triangle is known as Pascal's triangle.