Rationalised 2023-24
DETERMINANTS     103
Historical Note
The Chinese method of representing the coefficients of the unknowns of
several linear equations by using rods on a calculating board naturally led to the
discovery of simple method of elimination The arrangement of rods was precisely
that of the numbers in a determinant The Chinese, therefore, early developed the
idea of subtracting columns and rows as in simplification of a determinant
Mikami, China, pp 30, 93 Seki Kowa, the greatest of the Japanese Mathematicians of seventeenth
century in his work ‘Kai Fukudai no Ho’ in 1683 showed that he had the idea of
determinants and of their expansion