Abstract
The history of continued fractions is certainly one of the longest among those of mathematical concepts, since it begins with Euclid’s algorithm for the greatest common divisor at least three centuries B.C. As it is often the case and like Monsieur Jourdain in Molière’s “le bourgeois gentilhomme” (who was speaking in prose though he did not know he was doing so), continued fractions were used for many centuries before their real discovery.
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© 1991 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Brezinski, C. (1991). Introduction. 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_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-58169-4_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-63488-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-58169-4
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