Al khwarizmi

He was maybe from the city of (Al)-Kwarismi (today called Khiva or Khorazm, in Uzbekistan), a Persian scholar, and he is perhaps wrongly thought by many the "father" of algebra with his work "The book of Summary Concerning Calculating by Transposition and Reduction" written between ca. 813-833 AD.

I say that he's probably wrongly thought the father of algebra because he probably took much oh his knowledge from the immemorial Indian and greek mathematical tradition, notably from the greek mathematician Diophantus' "Arithmetica" " and the indian numeric system while working in Bagdad..

However, according to scholars, his way of dealing with "abstract" equations, unrelated to any practical problem, and then landing a general mathematical rule was absolutely new in Mathematics.

See how many "probably" and "perhaps"? This is history as it is at his heart. Legends abounds (Galileo heroism against the Church, Nero's burning of Rome, Tommaso Moro's virtues...)

(see more on the history of mathematics



here)

And here his biography.

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