I was shocked when I read on a blog that Aryabahatta, an Indian guy born in 476 AD discovered zero.
Surely people knew about zero before that.
But his greatest contribution has to be ZERO, for which he became immortal. He certainly did not use the symbol, but the French mathematician Georges Ifrah argues that knowledge of zero was implicit in Aryabhata's place-value system as a place holder for the powers of ten with null coefficients. The supposition is based on the following two facts: first, the invention of his alphabetical counting system would have been impossible without zero or the place-value system; secondly, he carries out calculations on square and cubic roots which are impossible if the numbers in question are not written according to the place-value system and zero.
1) Was Aryabhatta the first to invent the place value system with zero?
2) Did he invent a new system of writing or representing numbers with zero?
3) Did he borrow any of these from others before him?