Al-Kwharizmi

 **Muhammad ibn Musa Abu Jafar Khwarizmi ** Written by  **Massimo Pellegrini **  Life History  Not much is known about Muhammad ibn Musa Abu Jafar Khwarizmi (also referred to as Al-Khwarizmi) except for some limited information about his life as well as his wonderful mathematical discoveries. From what we know, Al-Khwarizmi was born in Baghdad in approximately 780 and died somewhere near there in approximately 850. At the time he was alive, there were very good opportunities for mathematics. The rulers of the Abbasid dynasty had recently built an academy in Baghdad where young men would go to collect and translate scientific works. These were compiled into one of the most famous libraries of the time. Al-Khwarizmi was appointed to the House of Wisdom by Caliph Al-Mamun. Al-Mamun reigned from 813 to 833. Mathematical Discoveries/Contribution to Society  Al-Khwarizmi is essentially the father of Algebra. His thoughts are explained to us in his book Hisab al-jabr w-al-musqabalah, which means "Science of the Reunion and the Opposition" or "science of the transposition and cancellation". It is, however, plausible that what we call algebra (from al-jabr) should actually be al-musqabalah or a combination, possibly resulting in alguabala. What Al’Khwarizmi called al-jabr is actually just manipulation of numbers or moving items between two sides of an equation. The second step he describes, the al-musqabalah, is number theory, or combining and cancelling numbers. So, what we call algebra is really only half of what Al-Khwarizmi wanted us to call it. But, setting that aside, he still gave us one of the most indispensable computation methods known to this day. 

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