Moritz Cantor suspects the influence of Diophantine methods, more particularly in the Hindu solutions of indeterminate equations, where certain technical terms are, in all probability, of Greek origin.
The Arabians more closely resembled the Hindus than the Greeks in the choice of studies; their philosophers blended speculative dissertations with the more progressive study of medicine; their mathematicians neglected the subtleties of the conic sections and Diophantine analysis, and applied themselves more particularly to perfect the system of numerals, arithmetic and astronomy.
Diophantine problems were revived by Gaspar Bachet, Pierre Fermat and Euler; the modern theory of numbers was founded by Fermat and developed by Euler, Lagrange and others; and the theory of probability was attacked by Blaise Pascal and Fermat, their work being subsequently expanded by James Bernoulli, Abraham de Moivre, Pierre Simon Laplace and others.
The Diophantine analysis was a favourite subject with Pell; he lectured on it at Amsterdam; and he is now best remembered for the indeterminate equation ax 2 +1 = y 2, which is known by his name.
This latter class he discussed so assiduously that they are often known as Diophantine problems, and the methods of resolving them as the Diophantine analysis (see Equation, Indeterminate).