“Though Wallis was advanced for his times and accepted negative numbers, he thought they were larger than infinity but not less than zero. In his Arithmetica Infinitorum (1655), he argued that since the ratio a/0, when a is positive, is infinite, then, when the denominator is changed to a negative number, as in a/b with b negative, the ratio must be greater than infinity.”

—  Morris Kline

Source: Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (1972), p. 253.

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American mathematician 1908–1992

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