HackingTheUniverse

Shen Kua was born in 1031 in Zhejiang province in China. He was a mathematician, astronomer, inventor and excelled in many other fields of science. While the chinese may have had compasses as early as 200, it was Shen Kua who first documented the magnetic compass needle, the concept of true north and the use of the compass for navigation at sea.

He studied fossilised remains and conjectured about climate change and that oceans must have once been where there were mountains that contained sea shells. Some of his mathematical work was near the edge of spherical geometry and trigonometry

PRECURSOR:
Yi Xing

CONCURRENT:
alHazen

SUCCESSOR:
Yang Hui