Famous Mathematicians

Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Musa Al-Khwarizmi

Born: about 780 in Baghdad
Died: about 850

We know few details of Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi's life.

Al-Khwarizmi and his colleagues the Banu Musa were scholars at the House of Wisdom in Baghdad. Their tasks there involved the translation of Greek scientific manuscripts and they also studied, and wrote on, algebra, geometry and astronomy.

The algebra treatise Hisab al-jabr w'al-muqabala was the most famous and important of all of al-Khwarizmi's works. It is the title of this text that gives us the word " algebra" and, in a sense it is the first book to be written on algebra.

Al-Khwarizmi continues his study of algebra in Hisab al-jabr w'al-muqabala by examining how the laws of arithmetic extend to arithmetic for his algebraic objects. For example he shows how to multiply out expressions such as

(a + bx) (c + dx)

Although again we should emphasise that al-Khwarizmi uses only words to describe his expressions, and no symbols are used.