Henricus Grammateus (also known as Henricus Scriptor, Heinrich Schreyber or Heinrich Schreiber; 1495 – 1525 or 1526) was a

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

. He was born in

Erfurt Erfurt () is the capital and largest city in the Central German state of Thuringia. It is located in the wide valley of the Gera river (progression: ), in the southern part of the Thuringian Basin, north of the Thuringian Forest. It sits i ...

. In 1507 he started to study at the University of Vienna, where he subsequently taught.

Christoph Rudolff Christoph Rudolff (born 1499 in Jawor, Silesia, died 1545 in Vienna) was the author of the first German textbook on algebra. From 1517 to 1521, Rudolff was a student of Henricus Grammateus (Schreyber from Erfurt) at the University of Vienna and ...

was one of his students. From 1514 to 1517 he studied in Cracow and then returned to Vienna. But when the plague affected Vienna Schreiber left the city and went to

Nuremberg Nuremberg ( ; german: link=no, Nürnberg ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the second-largest city of the German state of Bavaria after its capital Munich, and its 518,370 (2019) inhabitants make it the 14th-largest ...

. In 1518 he published details of a new

musical temperament In musical tuning, a temperament is a tuning system that slightly compromises the pure intervals of just intonation to meet other requirements. Most modern Western musical instruments are tuned in the equal temperament system. Tempering is the p ...

, which is now named after him, for the harpsichord. It was a precursor of the

equal temperament An equal temperament is a musical temperament or tuning system, which approximates just intervals by dividing an octave (or other interval) into equal steps. This means the ratio of the frequencies of any adjacent pair of notes is the same, wh ...

. In 1525 Schreiber was back in Vienna, where he is listed as "Examinator", i.e. eligible to work holding exams.

Works

* ''Algorithmus proportionum una cum monochordi generalis dyatonici compositione'', pub. Volfgangvm De Argentina, Cracow, 1514 * ''Libellus de compositione regularum pro vasorum mensuratione. Deque arte ista tota theoreticae et practicae'', Vienna, 1518 * ''Ayn new Kunstlich Buech'' (''A New Skill Book''), Vienna 1518, Nuremberg 1521 - contains (besides

Johannes Widmann Johannes Widmann (c. 1460 – after 1498) was a German mathematician. The + and - symbols first appeared in print in his book ''Mercantile Arithmetic'' or ''Behende und hüpsche Rechenung auff allen Kauffmanschafft'' published in Leipzig in 1489 ...

) the earliest-known use of the

plus and minus signs The plus and minus signs, and , are mathematical symbols used to represent the notions of positive and negative, respectively. In addition, represents the operation of addition, which results in a sum, while represents subtraction, resul ...

for addition and subtraction and is the earliest German text on bookkeeping Inoue, K. "The Neglected Contribution of Grammateus to Bookkeeping History"
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References

1495 births 1525 deaths Scientists from Erfurt 16th-century German mathematicians German music theorists 16th-century German writers 16th-century German male writers {{germany-mathematician-stub