About the Author
Iliya Petrov is a Bulgarian mathematician and scientist, born in 1934 in a small village near Pleven, in North Bulgaria.
In his youth Petrov encountered the reality of the Second World War and later Bulgaria joining the Communist bloc. His productive years as a researcher of mathematics remained deeply hidden from the world’s mainstream scientific thoughts, caught behind the “iron curtain.”
Petrov started his research on the correlation of the digits from 1 to 9 in the 1980s.
He developed a new algorithm for multiplication and division in maths. His method became well known in the Bulgarian scientific society as the “New method of calculation on planet Earth”. The Bulgarian genius registered his invention as a “New universal miniature table” at the “Institute for Inventions and Rationalisations in Bulgaria” and later as a “Mathematical board.”
Soon after Petrov’s launch of the campaign around The Human Computer, he was accepted as a legal member of the Union of Scientists in Bulgaria (USB). This accreditation helped him to participate in many media interviews and programmes, and to increase the understanding and awareness of his technique in Bulgaria. In 2013, the publishing-house of the USB issued a new book, A New Method for Calculation on Planet Earth, by Iliya Petrov, now a registered member of the Union of Scientists in Bulgaria.
The Bulgarian inventor believed that his method would be most useful for children, as it makes maths fun by calculating large numbers in seconds, only in one’s head. Now he believes practising mental maths to be beneficial, not only for children, but for adults as well.