The Study On The Development History Of Zero

Hindu-Arabic numerals are the international digital words nowadays,which has a prominent position and the widespread impact in the world.The digital zero "0" is a very familiar,the most common and basic mathematical concept for the public.In fact,it is still a very important number.Although the discovery of zero is much later than other natural numbers,the appearance of zero makes numeration with positional system gradually competed.Thus,zero is called one of the great discoveries of mankind.The paper,firstly,describes the origin and development of zero in countries such as Babylon,Maya,India and China with the principle of place value systems,and introduces the record of zero in other parts of Asia.The paper goes on to discuss the ways and means of zero transmission,and points out that has a very close relationship with the prevailing Islam,translated books,travel of scholars and businessmen travel.Then it analyses the four functions in the process of zero development: zero is a concept that "nothing";in the bit value notation,zero means "vacancy",and it plays the role of indicating the position of the digit;itself is a number,can participate in the operation;zero is the starting point or boundaries of the scale.And supplements that zero also has tightness and reference to other functions and so on.Next,it summarizes the zero with four forms of expression for vacancies,symbols,gestures,language.Finally,the author analyzes the factors from the four aspects that the value system,the language,the commercial trade and the production technology to promote the progress and development of zero,and points out their influence on the modern meaning.On the basis of studying the development of zero,the paper focuses on the meaning of zero,and the status of zero in modern mathematics education.Combined with 0 in the case of natural numbers in the mathematical education,the reasons that zero should not be a natural number from the perspective of the development history of zero: 0 is not in conformity with the concept of natural numbers;0 as a natural number which never records in mathematical authoritative books;throughout the history of world's mathematics,0 has not been a natural number.Of course,the provision that 0 is as a natural number can help with the international unity to facilitate academic exchanges.