History
The term "hypergeometric series" was first used by John Wallis in his 1655 book Arithmetica Infinitorum. Hypergeometric series were studied by Leonhard Euler, but the first full systematic treatment was given by Carl Friedrich Gauss (1813). Studies in the nineteenth century included those of Ernst Kummer (1836), and the fundamental characterisation by Bernhard Riemann of the hypergeometric function by means of the differential equation it satisfies. Riemann showed that the second-order differential equation for 2F1(z), examined in the complex plane, could be characterised (on the Riemann sphere) by its three regular singularities.
The cases where the solutions are algebraic functions were found by Hermann Schwarz (Schwarz's list).
Read more about this topic: Hypergeometric Functions
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