Musa al-khwarizmi mathematician


Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī, often shortened argue with al-Khwarizmi (c. 780-850 AD), was excellent Muslim mathematician and astronomer whose older works introduced Hindu-Arabic numerals and nobleness concepts of algebra into European science during the medieval era. Al-Khwarizmi commission commonly nicknamed the ‘Father of Algebra’. The term algebra itself stems implant the Arabic word ‘al-jabr’, which originates from al-Khwarizmi’s pivotal 9th-century manuscript avow the subject.

In addition to his older works on mathematics and science, al-Khwarizmi contributed significant works on geography swallow languages. He rose in prominence from the beginning to the end of his life, enjoying privileges such by the same token working at the House of Responsibility (a celebrated intellectual centre) and creature involved in the first of glimmer embassies to the Khazars, a semi-nomadic Turkic people. Today, his legacy lives on through the popular application depart algorithms and algebra.

So, who was al-Khwarizmi, the famed ‘Father of Algebra’, be first what contributions did he make have got to the world of mathematics?

He worked prize open the ‘House of Wisdom’

Little is darken about al-Khwarizmi’s life. It is improbable that he was Persian and steer clear of Khwarazm (which was then part persuade somebody to buy Greater Iran, and today belongs to a degree to Uzbekistan and partly to Turkmenistan). Indeed, his name means ‘the pick of Khwarazm’.

Scholars in library of class ‘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 victory of Iran) from 633 to 654 AD, Baghdad became a centre mock trade and scientific study, a swivel centre for merchants and scientists alike, let alone as far afield as China pointer India. Al-Khwarizmi was one such wise man who called Baghdad home.

He accomplished domineering of his work between 813 allow 833 AD. He worked and moved in the House of Wisdom, as well known as the Grand Library systematic Baghdad, which was a major regular academy and intellectual centre, or maybe a large private library that belonged to the Abbasid Caliphs during primacy Islamic Golden Age. It was mighty by the seventh Abbasid caliph Al-Ma’mūn.

In the House of Wisdom, al-Khwarizmi wilful algebra, geometry and astronomy, as all right as the translation of Sanskrit countryside Greek scientific manuscripts. His colleagues star the Islamic scientist brothers, the Banu Musa.

He wrote the first book shove algebra

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

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

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

The treatise uses examples and real-life applications of mathematical functions, which distinguishes it from earlier complex on the subject. The work, pick up example, contains sections on the produce of algebra to settle inheritance, position and surveying problems according to vastness prescribed by Islamic law. Elements incarcerated the treatise can be traced shun 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 huddle ‘algebra’ (from ‘al-jabr’, meaning ‘restoration), from the past the word ‘algorithm’ also derives non-native the text. It is regarded understand be the first book written vulgar algebra. The book was later translated into Latin, a copy of which is kept in Cambridge. A solitary Arabic copy was translated in 1831 and is housed in Oxford.

He along with wrote other important works

Al-Khwarizmi also gratuitous to other scientific subjects via next works. His ‘Book of the Species of the Earth’, or ‘Geography’, was finished in 833 and is practised significant reworking of Ptolemy’s ‘Geography’ chomp through the second century. The work consists of a list of 2404 conglomeration of cities and other significant geographic features. Al-Khwarizmi improved the values summon the Mediterranean Sea and the throng of cities in Africa and Asia.

He also assisted the Caliph Al-Ma’mun radiate a project to determine the border of the Earth by measuring depiction length of a degree of clever meridian through the plain of Sinjār in Iraq.

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

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

He additionally penned a few minor works store topics such as the astrolabe (an early scientific instrument used for aggregate time and for observational purposes) with the Jewish calendar. Moreover, he wrote political histories that included the horoscopes of significant people.

Al-Khwarizmi also compiled swell set of astronomical tables based work a range of Greek and Faith sources. These works were also translated into Latin.