Aryabhata

 Aryabhata, the first inventor of zero and value of pi, and the first astronomer who said that the Earth is round, is arguably the greatest mathematician-astronomer to be born in the subcontinent. Born in Kerala, he perceived his education at the University of Nalanda and his greatest work includes Aryabhatiya and Arya-siddhanta.  

In the Ganita (calculations) section of Aryabhatiya, which is an astronomical treatise, Aryabhata made the fundamental advances in finding the lengths of chords of circles, by using the half chord instead of the full chord technique used by Greeks. He worked on approximation of the value of pi and concluded it to 3.1416. Aryabhata also provided the methods for extracting square roots, summing arithmetic series and other mathematical problems. His work, Arya-siddhanta, which is a text book for astronomical calculations, is even used today for in preparing Panchangs (Hindu calendars). His name was immortalized, when India's first satellite was named after him.

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