Who knows about imaginary numbers?

Question

Lot's of people will assume that the square root of minus 16 is impossible but the real answer is minus 4i. Who discovered imaginary numbers and can you tell me a bit more about them?

Answer 1

Descartes was the first to use the term “imaginary” number in 1637. However, imaginary numbers were discovered much earlier by Gerolamo Cardano in the 1500s but they were not widely accepted until the work of Leonhard Euler (1707–1783) and Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855).

If you would like more information go to the source link.

Answer 2

Theoretically, the complex numbers are simply the ordered pairs of numbers (a,b) such that, among other relations, (0,1) * (0,1) = (-1,0).  

This structure turns out to be very important, especially in studying circular/rotating systems (such as quantum mechanics, where many a physics student gets tripped up thinking how this complex number "doesn't really exist")

Imaginary numbers *do* exist, at least as much as almost all the real numbers exist.

For instance, a googolplex probably doesn't "exist" in any actual sense, but we still call it a "natural number".

In my mind, the imaginary number i has a much better argument for existence than a googolplex does.

Answer 3

This is all I know. Imaginary numbers are numbers that do not exist, yet they have a numerical equation. E.G, square root of 1 is i. There is no real number for the square root of i, yet, there is a mathematical way to get to it.