Do you know who invented Algebra? I’m sure some of you would be familiar with this name.
Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Musa Al-Khwarizmi
Al-Khwarizmi is often considered the greatest mathematician of all time. Arabic scholar Al-Khwarizmi (c. 780 - c. 850) visited India and collected mathematical material for his book ”Ilm al-jabr wa’d muqabalah”. He sold his book to the Romans. His name became the word ‘algorism’, the old word for arithmetic. The same word was the root for ‘Algorithm’ used in computing. Through his writings, the decimal system and the use of zero were transmitted to the west.
The word “algebra” is named after the Arabic word “al-jabr” from the title of the book [al-Kitāb al-muḫtaṣar fī ḥisāb al-ğabr wa-l-muqābala’ , (The book of Summary Concerning Calculating by Transposition and Reduction)
. J. O’Conner and E. F. Robertson wrote in the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive:
“Perhaps one of the most significant advances made by Arabic mathematics began at this time with the work of al-Khwarizmi, namely the beginnings of algebra. It is important to understand just how significant this new idea was. It was a revolutionary move away from the Greek concept of mathematics which was essentially geometry. Algebra was a unifying theory which allowed rational numbers, irrational numbers geometrical magnitudes, etc., to all be treated as “algebraic objects”. It gave mathematics a whole new development path so much broader in concept to that which had existed before, and provided a vehicle for future development of the subject. Another important aspect of the introduction of algebraic ideas was that it allowed mathematics to be applied to itself in a way which had not happened before.
Al-Khwarizmi’s algebra is regarded as the foundation and cornerstone of the sciences. In a sense, al-Khwarizmi is more entitled to be called “the father of algebra” than Diophantus because al-Khwarizmi is the first to teach algebra in an elementary form and for its own sake, while Diophantus is primarily concerned with the theory of numbers.
Famous works
Al-Jabr wa-al-Muqabilah from whose title came the name “Algebra”
Kitab al-Jam’a wal-Tafreeq bil Hisab al-Hindi (on Arithmatic, which survived in a Latin translation but was lost in the original Arabic)
Kitab Surat-al-Ard (on geography)
Istikhraj Tarikh al-Yahud (about the Jewish calendar)
Kitab al-Tarikh
Kitab al-Rukhmat (about sun-dials)