Emperor Kangxi was an ambitious and studious monarch. He studied astronomy, mathematics, geography and Latin under the guidance of the Belgian missionary Ferdinand Verbiste. Although Emperor Kangxi was brilliant, it was not easy to listen to foreign teachers.
Because Ferdinand ferdinand verbiest and others have limited knowledge of Chinese and Manchu, they can barely cope with daily conversations, but they are not enough to express their rigorous and profound scientific knowledge. At that time, most of the textbooks were in foreign languages, and even the Chinese version could not pass. In this way, there is bound to be a lot of energy spent on language communication in learning, and the progress is not fast.
But Kangxi studied hard and was patient. If you don't understand it at first time, please ask the teacher to say it again until you really understand it. When ferdinand verbiest was talking about equations, his sentences were long and his pronunciation was unclear. Kangxi's mind is often very chaotic. How can I get the teacher to speak well? After thinking for a while, a wonderful method suddenly appeared.
He suggested to Ferdinand ferdinand verbiest that the unknown should be translated into "yuan" and the highest number into "times" (finite integer equation), so that the values of the unknown on the left and right sides of the equation can be translated into "roots" or "solutions" ... Ferdinand ferdinand verbiest carefully wrote it down with a pen, and then replaced his original cumbersome words with these newly created terms:
Ferdinand ferdinand verbiest stared at Kangxi in disbelief, looked blankly for a while, and suddenly embraced Kangxi according to the most cordial etiquette in the West: "I have been studying and teaching for decades, and neither teachers nor students have seen anyone who wants to think like you!" These mathematical terms created by Kangxi are scientific and concise, very easy to understand and remember, so they continue to this day.