Math: A Crash Course by Brian Clegg

Author:Brian Clegg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ivy Press
Published: 2019-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

BIOGRAPHIES

AL-KHWARIZMI (c. 780–c. 850)

There are few certain biographical details of Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi who was possibly born in Baghdad. He was a scholar in the House of Wisdom there, an academy established by the caliph Al-Mamun, to whom Al-Khwarizmi’s manuscript on algebra Hisab al-jabr w’al-muqabala (from which the word “algebra” originates) was dedicated. His interest in algebra was at least in part driven by the complexity of Islamic inheritance laws; Al-Khwarizmi stated that its applications included “inheritance, legacies, partition, lawsuits, and trade.” The two terms in the title refer to simplifying equations by combining identical powers (al-jabr, or “completion”) and by combining numbers (al-muqabala, or “balancing”). The book used both algebraic and geometric methods, perhaps inspired by Euclid’s Elements. Other influences were Hebrew and Indian mathematical writing. Al-Khwarizmi also wrote on astronomy and geography. However, his other best-known book was translated as Algoritmi de Numero Indorum in Latin. Although it was Fibonacci’s Liber Abaci that established “Arabic” numerals in Europe (see here), Al-Khwarizmi’s book also explained them, and the Latinized version of his name gave us the word “algorithm.”

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.