The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art (九章算術) is a Chinese mathematics book, probably composed in the 1st century AD, but perhaps as early as 200 BC.

Most scholars believe that Chinese mathematics and the mathematics of the ancient Mediterranean world had developed more or less independently up to the time when the Nine Chapters reached its final form.

The Suan shu shu is an ancient Chinese text on mathematics approximately seven thousand characters in length, written on 190 bamboo strips. It was discovered together with other writings in 1983 when archaeologists opened a tomb at Zhangjiashan in Hubei province. From documentary evidence this tomb is known to have been closed in 186 BC, early in the Western Han dynasty. While its relationship to the Nine Chapters is still under discussion by scholars, some of its contents are clearly paralleled there. The text of the Suan shu shu is however much less systematic than the Nine Chapters; and appears to consist of a number of more or less independent short sections of text drawn from a number of sources.

Famous Chinese mathematicians

Zu Chongzhi (祖冲之) of the Northern and Southern Dynasties was the first person to calculate the value of Pi to seven decimal places.