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To: all the best
I want to revise my question, and yes, this cracks me up to ask, and I wrote this GD post, but....

who was Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī?

LOL!

30 posted on 02/10/2011 8:04:05 PM PST by jd777
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To: jd777
Hope this helps. Best regards. While the word algebra comes from the Arabic language (al-jabr, الجبر literally, restoration) and much of its methods from Arabic mathematics, its roots can be traced to earlier traditions, most notably ancient Indian mathematics, which had a direct influence on Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī (c. 780–850). He learned Indian mathematics and introduced it to the Muslim world through his famous arithmetic text, Book on Addition and Subtraction after the Method of the Indians.[3][4] He later wrote The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing, which established algebra as a mathematical discipline that is independent of geometry and arithmetic.[5] The roots of algebra can be traced to the ancient Babylonians,[6] who developed an advanced arithmetical system with which they were able to do calculations in an algorithmic fashion. The Babylonians developed formulas to calculate solutions for problems typically solved today by using linear equations, quadratic equations, and indeterminate linear equations. By contrast, most Egyptians of this era, as well as Greek and Chinese mathematicians in the 1st millennium BC, usually solved such equations by geometric methods, such as those described in the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus, Euclid's Elements, and The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art. The geometric work of the Greeks, typified in the Elements, provided the framework for generalizing formulae beyond the solution of particular problems into more general systems of stating and solving equations, though this would not be realized until the medieval Muslim mathematicians. The Hellenistic mathematicians Hero of Alexandria and Diophantus [7] as well as Indian mathematicians such as Brahmagupta continued the traditions of Egypt and Babylon, though Diophantus' Arithmetica and Brahmagupta's Brahmasphutasiddhanta are on a higher level.[8] For example, the first complete arithmetic solution (including zero and negative solutions) to quadratic equations was described by Brahmagupta in his book Brahmasphutasiddhanta. Later, Arabic and Muslim mathematicians developed algebraic methods to a much higher degree of sophistication. Although Diophantus and the Babylonians used mostly special ad hoc methods to solve equations, Al-Khwarizmi was the first to solve equations using general methods. He solved the linear indeterminate equations, quadratic equations, second order indeterminate equations and equations with multiple variables.
36 posted on 02/11/2011 4:45:29 AM PST by all the best
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