Argand diagramIn 1797, the concept of a geometrical interpretation of complex numbers was submitted by Caspar Wessel in a paper to a meeting of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences.He represented complex numbers as points in a Cartesian plane, with the real portion of the number on the x axis and the imaginary part on the y axis. This was also independently devised a few years later, by Jean-Robert Argand, an amateur mathematician who self-published his ideas in an anomymous monograph(1806). Through publicity generated when Argand came forward and identified himself as the author, it was his name that has the lasting association with the Argand diagram.« |
