Abstract
The 17th century saw the beginning of the theory of continued fractions. The 18th century was really their golden age. It was marked by three outstanding mathematicians, Euler, Lambert and Lagrange, all belonging to the Berlin Academy of Sciences which was reorganized by Frederic the second (Berlin, 24.1.1712—Berlin, 17.8.1786). The 18th century was also that of the birth of Padé approximants, which are connected with continued fractions and played (and are still playing) an important rôle in applications. The century ended with the publication of the first encyclopaedias and mathematical dictionaries, which had great importance in the spreading of continued fractions among the mathematicians, thus preparing the formidable explosion of the subject during the 19th century.
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© 1991 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Brezinski, C. (1991). Golden Age. In: History of Continued Fractions and Padé Approximants. Springer Series in Computational Mathematics, vol 12. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-58169-4_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-58169-4_5
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-63488-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-58169-4
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