Mādhava of Saṅgamagrāma — the Founder of the Kerala School
From Mādhava's Sphuṭacandrāpti — the True Moon and the Infinite Series, taught by Acharya T Krishnatrey. This lesson is free to read.
Around **1400 CE**, in a village near the Nila river in Kerala, **Mādhava of Saṅgamagrāma** (c. 1340–1425) founded what is now called the **Kerala school of astronomy and mathematics**. He wrote a short, ingenious work, the **Sphuṭacandrāpti** — "the obtaining of the TRUE Moon" — which computes the Moon's exact position at short intervals through the day. And he did something greater still: he found the **infinite series** for π and for the sine, two to three centuries before Newton and Leibniz. <pre data-block="quote">"He who feels no wonder on merely hearing this method — let him, through his own want of qualification, not take up this procedure." — Mādhava, Sphuṭacandrāpti 3</pre>