Cheng Dawei


Cheng Dawei, also known as Da Wei Cheng or Ch'eng Ta-wei, is a Chinese mathematician known mainly as the author of Suanfa Tongzong. He has been described as "the most illustrious Chinese arithmetician."
Almost all that is known about his life is contained in a passage written in the Preface of the book by one of his descendants when the book was being reprinted:
Cheng Dawei was not a professional mathematician. From the description cited above, one could deduce that he must have traveled widely. Also must have been well off since he purchased books without asking the price. Again we can see that he was an avid collector of books on mathematics. This is borne out by the contents of his work General Source of Computational Methods which is essentially a compilation of problems from earlier works.

Cheng Dawei Abacus Museum

In the Huangshan City in southern Anhui province in, there is a museum for abacuses named after Cheng Dawei. There are more than 1,000 abacuses and 3,000 copies of related materials displayed in the showcases. These abacuses are made of gold, silver, ivory, jade, stone, hard wood respectively with different shapes.