who invented vedic maths

Vedic math was rediscovered from the ancient Indian scriptures between 1911 and 1918 by Sri Bharati Krishna Tirthaji (1884-1960), a scholar of Sanskrit, Mathematics, History and Philosophy. He studied these ancient texts for years, and after careful investigation was able to reconstruct a series of mathematical formulae called sutras.

Bharati Krishna Tirthaji, who was also the former Shankaracharya (major religious leader) of Puri, India, delved into the ancient Vedic texts and established the techniques of this system in his pioneering work - Vedic Mathematics (1965), which is considered the starting point for all work on Vedic math. It is said that after Bharati Krishna's original 16 volumes of work expounding the Vedic system were lost, in his final years he wrote this single volume, which was published five years after his death.

Vedic math was immediately hailed as a new alternative system of mathematics, when a copy of the book reached London in the late 1960s. Some British mathematicians, including Kenneth Williams, Andrew Nicholas and Jeremy Pickles took interest in this new system. They extended the introductory material of Bharati Krishna's book, and delivered lectures on it in London. In 1981, this was collated into a book entitled Introductory Lectures on Vedic Mathematics. A few successive trips to India by Andrew Nicholas between 1981 and 1987, renewed the interest on Vedic math, and scholars and teachers in India started taking it seriously.

Interest in Vedic maths is growing in the field of education where maths teachers are looking for a new and better approach to the subject. Even students at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) are said to be using this ancient technique for quick calculations. No wonder, a recent Convocation speech addressed to the students of IIT, Delhi, by Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi, Indian Minister for Science & Technology, stressed the significance of Vedic maths, while pointing out the important contributions of ancient Indian mathematicians, such as Aryabhatta, who laid the foundations of algebra, Baudhayan, the great geometer, and Medhatithi and Madhyatithi, the saint duo, who formulated the basic framework for numerals.