LESSON 5

Muhammad Al-Khwarizmi (c.780-850 CE)

One of the first Directors of the House of
Wisdom in Bagdad in the early 9th Century was
an outstanding Persian mathematician
called Muhammad Al-Khwarizmi. He
oversaw the translation of the
major Greek and Indian mathematical and
astronomy works (including those
of Brahmagupta) into Arabic, and produced
original work which had a lasting influence on
the advance of Muslim and (after his works
spread to Europe through Latin translations in
the 12th Century) later European mathematics.

The word “algorithm” is derived from the Latinization of his name, and the word
“algebra” is derived from the Latinization of “al-jabr“, part of the title of his most
famous book, in which he introduced the fundamental algebraic methods and
techniques for solving equations.

Perhaps his most important contribution to mathematics was his strong advocacy of the
Hindu numerical system, which Al-Khwarizmi recognized as having the power and
efficiency needed to revolutionize Islamic and Western mathematics. The Hindu
numerals 1 – 9 and 0 – which have since become known as Hindu-Arabic numerals –
were soon adopted by the entire Islamic world. Later, with translations of Al-
Khwarizmi’s work into Latin by Adelard of Bath and others in the 12th Century, and with
the influence of Fibonacci’s “Liber Abaci” they would be adopted throughout Europe as
well.

Who created algebra – The Father Of Algebra

Al-Khwarizmi’s other important contribution was algebra, a word derived from the
title of a mathematical text he published in about 830 called “Al-Kitab al-mukhtasar fi
hisab al-jabr wa’l-muqabala” (“The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion
and Balancing”). Al-Khwarizmi wanted to go from the specific problems considered by
the Indians and Chinese to a more general way of analyzing problems, and in doing so
he created an abstract mathematical language which is used across the world today.
His book is considered the foundational text of modern algebra, although he
did not employ the kind of algebraic notation used today (he used words to explain the
problem, and diagrams to solve it). But the book provided an exhaustive account of
solving polynomial equations up to the second degree, and introduced for the first time
the fundamental algebraic methods of “reduction” (rewriting an expression in a simpler
form), “completion” (moving a negative quantity from one side of the equation to the
other side and changing its sign) and “balancing” (subtraction of the same quantity
from both sides of an equation, and the cancellation of like terms on opposite sides).

In particular, Al-Khwarizmi developed a formula for systematically solving quadratic

equations (equations involving unknown numbers to the power of 2, or x2) by using the
methods of completion and balancing to reduce any equation to one of six standard
forms, which were then solvable. He described the standard forms in terms of “squares”
(what would today be “x2“), “roots” (what would today be “x“) and “numbers” (regular
constants, like 42), and identified the six types as: squares equal roots (ax2 = bx),
squares equal number (ax2 = c), roots equal number (bx = c), squares and roots equal
number (ax2 + bx = c), squares and number equal roots (ax2 + c = bx), and roots and
number equal squares (bx + c = ax2).

Al-Khwarizmi is usually credited with the development of lattice (or sieve) multiplication
method of multiplying large numbers, a method algorithmically equivalent to long
multiplication. His lattice method was later introduced into Europe by Fibonacci.

In addition to his work in mathematics, Al-Khwarizmi made important contributions to

astronomy, also largely based on methods from India, and he developed the first
quadrant (an instrument used to determine time by observations of the Sun or stars),
the second most widely used astronomical instrument during the Middle Ages after the
astrolabe. He also produced a revised and completed version of Ptolemy’s “Geography”,
consisting of a list of 2,402 coordinates of cities throughout the known world.
 CHAPTER 2
MEDIEVAL MATHEMATICS

During the centuries in which the Chinese, Indian and Islamic mathematicians had
been in the ascendancy, Europe had fallen into the Dark Ages, in which science,
mathematics and almost all intellectual endeavour stagnated.

Scholastic scholars only valued studies in the humanities, such as philosophy and
literature, and spent much of their energies quarrelling over subtle subjects in
metaphysics and theology, such as “How many angels can stand on the point of a
needle?“
 From the 4th to 12th Centuries,
European knowledge and study of
arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and
music was limited mainly to Boethius’
translations of some of the works of
ancient Greek masters such as
Nicomachus and Euclid. All trade and
calculation was made using the clumsy
and inefficient Roman numeral system,
and with an abacus based
on Greek and Roman models.

By the 12th Century, though, Europe,

and particularly Italy, was beginning to
trade with the East, and Eastern
knowledge gradually began to spread to
the West. Robert of Chester translated Al-Khwarizmi‘s important book on algebra into
Latin in the 12th Century, and the complete text of Euclid‘s “Elements” was translated
in various versions by Adelard of Bath, Herman of Carinthia and Gerard of Cremona.
The great expansion of trade and commerce in general created a growing practical
need for mathematics, and arithmetic entered much more into the lives of common
people and was no longer limited to the academic realm.

The advent of the printing press in the mid-15th Century also had a huge impact.
Numerous books on arithmetic were published for the purpose of teaching business
people computational methods for their commercial needs and mathematics gradually
began to acquire a more important position in education.

Europe’s first great medieval mathematician was the Italian Leonardo of Pisa,
better known by his nickname Fibonacci. Although best known for the so-called
Fibonacci Sequence of numbers, perhaps his most important contribution to European
mathematics was his role in spreading the use of the Hindu-Arabic numeral system
throughout Europe early in the 13th Century, which soon made the Roman numeral
system obsolete, and opened the way for great advances in European mathematics.

An important (but largely unknown and underrated) mathematician and scholar of the
14th Century was the Frenchman Nicole Oresme. He used a system of rectangular
coordinates centuries before his countryman René Descartes popularized the idea, as
well as perhaps the first time-speed-distance graph. Also, leading from his research into
musicology, he was the first to use fractional exponents, and also worked on infinite
series, being the first to prove that the harmonic series 1⁄1 + 1⁄2 + 1⁄3 + 1⁄4 + 1⁄5… is a
divergent infinite series (i.e. not tending to a limit, other than infinity).

The German scholar Regiomontatus was perhaps the most capable mathematician of
the 15th Century, his main contribution to mathematics being in the area of
trigonometry. He helped separate trigonometry from astronomy, and it was largely
through his efforts that trigonometry came to be considered an independent branch of
mathematics. His book “De Triangulis“, in which he described much of the basic
trigonometric knowledge which is now taught in high school and college, was the first
great book on trigonometry to appear in print.

Mention should also be made of Nicholas of Cusa (or Nicolaus Cusanus), a 15th Century
German philosopher, mathematician and astronomer, whose prescient ideas on the
infinite and the infinitesimal directly influenced later mathematicians like Gottfried
Leibniz and Georg Cantor. He also held some distinctly non-standard intuitive ideas
about the universe and the Earth’s position in it, and about the elliptical orbits of the
planets and relative motion, which foreshadowed the later discoveries of Copernicus
and Kepler.