History of trigonometry

Early study of triangles can be traced to Egyptian mathematics (Rhind Mathematical Papyrus) and Babylonian mathematics during the 2nd millennium BC. Trigonometry was also prevalent in Kushite mathematics. Systematic study of trigonometric functions began in Hellenistic mathematics, reaching India as part of Hellenistic astronomy. In Indian astronomy, the study of trigonometric functions flourished in the Gupta period, especially due to Aryabhata (sixth century AD), who discovered the sine function, cosine function, and versine function.

During the Middle Ages, the study of trigonometry continued in Islamic mathematics, by mathematicians such as al-Khwarizmi and Abu al-Wafa. The knowledge of trigonometric functions passed to Arabia from the Indian Subcontinent. It became an independent discipline in the Islamic world, where all six trigonometric functions were known. Translations of Arabic and Greek texts led to trigonometry being adopted as a subject in the Latin West beginning in the Renaissance with Regiomontanus.

The development of modern trigonometry shifted during the western Age of Enlightenment, beginning with 17th-century mathematics (Isaac Newton and James Stirling) and reaching its modern form with Leonhard Euler (1748).

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