Presentation Al Khwarizmi

« Al-Khwarizmi Context We are in the 9th century in Baghdad.

Caliph Al-Ma'mun (813–833) is surrounded by scholars who possess extensive knowledge for their time.

They are translators, philosophers, astronomers, mathematicians, and also theologians. Among them, Mohammed ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi has left his mark on the history of mathematics.

He was born in a small village in a province called Khwarizm, in present-day Uzbekistan.

He was a mathematician, geographer, astrologer, and Persian astronomer, a member of the House of Wisdom in Baghdad.

While the events of Al-Khwarizmi's life are somewhat unknown, many traces of his scientific work exist.

His writings on various subjects were all written in Arabic and were later translated into Latin around the 12th century. His Work His most famous publication is called Algebra et Muqabala.

Considered the first algebraic manual, this book is composed of six chapters without numbers. Everything in this book is expressed in words; for example, the square of the unknown is called "the possession," the unknown is called "the root," and the constant is the "number." Here’s an example to illustrate: if I write "3x + 4 = x^2," this translates as "3 roots and 4 numbers are equal to 1 possession." The title of his book consists of two words: ● On one hand, we have jabr, which was adopted by Europeans and later became the word "algebra," meaning the transposition of terms in an equation. ● On the other hand, we have muqabala, meaning "opposition" or "reduction," which allows us, by canceling out homologous terms, to find the reduced form of a function. With the publication of his first manual, Al-Khwarizmi is often seen as the father of algebra.

While algebra was already explored by Diophantus of Alexandria, who wrote his work in Greek, it’s almost certain that Al-Khwarizmi was unaware of Diophantus's work, as the first Arabic translation of.... »