Law of Sines - History

History

According to Ubiratàn D'Ambrosio and Helaine Selin, the spherical law of sines was discovered in the 10th century. It is variously attributed to al-Khujandi, Abul Wafa Bozjani, Nasir al-Din al-Tusi and Abu Nasr Mansur.

Al-Jayyani's The book of unknown arcs of a sphere in the 11th century introduced the general law of sines. The plane law of sines was later described in the 13th century by Nasīr al-Dīn al-Tūsī. In his On the Sector Figure, he stated the law of sines for plane and spherical triangles, and provided proofs for this law.

According to Glen Van Brummelen, "The Law of Sines is really Regiomontanus's foundation for his solutions of right-angled triangles in Book IV, and these solutions are in turn the bases for his solutions of general triangles." Regiomontanus was a 15th-century German mathematician.

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