Who discovered zero and how?

Answer 1

By the middle of the 2nd millennium BCE, the Babylonian mathematics had a sophisticated sexagesimal positional numeral system. The lack of a positional value (or zero) was indicated by a space between sexagesimal numerals. By 300 BCE, a punctuation symbol (two slanted wedges) was co-opted as a placeholder in the same Babylonian system. In a tablet unearthed at Kish (dating from about 700 BCE), the scribe Bêl-bân-aplu wrote his zeros with three hooks, rather than two slanted wedges. The Babylonian placeholder was not a true zero because it was not used alone. Nor was it used at the end of a number. Thus numbers like 2 and 120 (2×60), 3 and 180 (3×60), 4 and 240 (4×60), looked the same because the larger numbers lacked a final sexagesimal placeholder. Only context could differentiate them. Records show that the ancient Greeks seemed unsure about the status of zero as a number. They asked themselves, "How can nothing be something?", leading to philosophical and, by the Medieval period, religious arguments about the nature and existence of zero and the vacuum. The paradoxes of Zeno of Elea depend in large part on the uncertain interpretation of zero. The concept of zero as a number and not merely a symbol for separation is attributed to India where by the 9th century CE practical calculations were carried out using zero, which was treated like any other number, even in case of divisionThe Indian scholar Pingala (circa 5th-2nd century BCE) used binary numbers in the form of short and long syllables (the latter equal in length to two short syllables), making it similar to Morse Code .He and his contemporary Indian scholars used the Sanskrit word śūnya to refer to zero or void.