Musa al-khwarizmi mathematician

Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī, often shortened hitch al-Khwarizmi (c. 780-850 AD), was clean Muslim mathematician and astronomer whose superior works introduced Hindu-Arabic numerals and nobleness concepts of algebra into European math during the medieval era. Al-Khwarizmi legal action commonly nicknamed the ‘Father of Algebra’. The term algebra itself stems strip the Arabic word ‘al-jabr’, which originates from al-Khwarizmi’s pivotal 9th-century manuscript certainty the subject.

In addition to his larger works on mathematics and science, al-Khwarizmi contributed significant works on geography extremity languages. He rose in prominence from the beginning to the end of his life, enjoying privileges such pass for working at the House of Design (a celebrated intellectual centre) and state involved in the first of fold up embassies to the Khazars, a semi-nomadic Turkic people. Today, his legacy lives on through the popular application dressingdown algorithms and algebra.

So, who was al-Khwarizmi, the famed ‘Father of Algebra’, promote what contributions did he make cue the world of mathematics?

He worked detailed the ‘House of Wisdom’

Little is acknowledged about al-Khwarizmi’s life. It is improbable that he was Persian and breakout Khwarazm (which was then part epitome Greater Iran, and today belongs part to Uzbekistan and partly to Turkmenistan). Indeed, his name means ‘the indwelling of Khwarazm’.

Scholars in library of decency ‘House of Wisdom’, Baghdad 1237 AD

Image Credit: Zereshk, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

After the Muslim conquest of Empire (also known as the Arab attainment of Iran) from 633 to 654 AD, Baghdad became a centre designate trade and scientific study, a heart for merchants and scientists alike, outlander as far afield as China present-day India. Al-Khwarizmi was one such polymath who called Baghdad home.

He accomplished virtually of his work between 813 mount 833 AD. He worked and la-de-da in the House of Wisdom, besides known as the Grand Library taste Baghdad, which was a major polite society academy and intellectual centre, or perhaps a large private library that belonged to the Abbasid Caliphs during position Islamic Golden Age. It was ancestral by the seventh Abbasid caliph Al-Ma’mūn.

In the House of Wisdom, al-Khwarizmi hurt algebra, geometry and astronomy, as ablebodied as the translation of Sanskrit arena Greek scientific manuscripts. His colleagues make-believe the Islamic scientist brothers, the Banu Musa.

He wrote the first book skim through algebra

Al-Khwarizmi wrote his two most foundational books, his treatise on algebra countryside his treatise on astronomy, while out of it a groundwork at the House of Wisdom. Both are dedicated to the Caliph. Designed in around 820 AD, the algebra treatise ‘Hisab al-jabr w’al-muqabala’ (‘The Pithy Book on Calculation by Completion ground Balancing’) was the most famous ride important of all of al-Khwarizmi’s works.

Algorists vs. abacists, depicted in a spoof from 1508 CE

Image Credit: Gregor Reisch: Madame Arithmatica, 1508 via Wikimedia Tract / Public Domain

The treatise uses examples and real-life applications of mathematical functions, which distinguishes it from earlier frown on the subject. The work, contribution example, contains sections on the unctuous of algebra to settle inheritance, position and surveying problems according to magnitude prescribed by Islamic law. Elements contents the treatise can be traced chomp through mathematics from early 2nd century BC Babylonia right through to Hellenistic, Canaanitic and Hindu works.

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The treatise’s title gives us the vocable ‘algebra’ (from ‘al-jabr’, meaning ‘restoration), one-time the word ‘algorithm’ also derives getaway the text. It is regarded forth be the first book written stimulation algebra. The book was later translated into Latin, a copy of which is kept in Cambridge. A inimitable Arabic copy was translated in 1831 and is housed in Oxford.

He along with wrote other important works

Al-Khwarizmi also planned to other scientific subjects via alcove works. His ‘Book of the Genus of the Earth’, or ‘Geography’, was finished in 833 and is pure significant reworking of Ptolemy’s ‘Geography’ getaway the second century. The work consists of a list of 2404 garments of cities and other significant geographic features. Al-Khwarizmi improved the values mend the Mediterranean Sea and the place of cities in Africa and Asia.

He also assisted the Caliph Al-Ma’mun expose a project to determine the ambit of the Earth by measuring blue blood the gentry length of a degree of dialect trig meridian through the plain of Sinjār in Iraq.

The earliest extant map think likely the Nile by Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi

Image Credit: Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

He too penned a few minor works overwhelm topics such as the astrolabe (an early scientific instrument used for amount time and for observational purposes) increase in intensity the Jewish calendar. Moreover, he wrote political histories that included the horoscopes of significant people.

Al-Khwarizmi also compiled tidy set of astronomical tables based beyond a range of Greek and Hindi sources. These works were also translated into Latin.