"al-Khwārizmī" redirects here. For other uses, see
al-Khwārizmī (disambiguation).
[TABLE="class: infobox biography vcard, width: 22"]
[TR]
[TH="colspan: 2, align: center"]Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī[/TH]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="colspan: 2, align: center"]
Statue of Al-Khwārizmī[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH="align: left"]Born[/TH]
[TD]c. 780[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH="align: left"]Died[/TH]
[TD]c. 850[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH="align: left"]Ethnicity[/TH]
[TD="class: category"]
Persian[SUP]
[1][/SUP][SUP]
[2][/SUP][SUP]
[3][/SUP][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH="align: left"]Known for[/TH]
[TD]Treatises on algebra and
Indian numerals[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH="align: left"]Influenced[/TH]
[TD]
Abu Kamil[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī[SUP]
[note 1][/SUP] (c. 780,
Khwārizm[SUP]
[2][/SUP][SUP]
[4][/SUP][SUP]
[5][/SUP] – c. 850) was a
Persian[SUP]
[1][/SUP][SUP]
[2][/SUP][SUP]
[3][/SUP]
mathematician,
astronomer and
geographer during the
Abbasid Empire, a
scholar in the
House of Wisdom in
Baghdad. The word al-Khwarizmi is pronounced in classical Arabic as Al-Khwarithmi hence the Latin transliteration.
In the twelfth century,
Latin translations of
his work on the
Indian numerals introduced the
decimal positional number system to the
Western world.[SUP]
[5][/SUP] His
Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing presented the first systematic solution of
linear and
quadratic equations in Arabic. In Renaissance Europe, he was considered the original inventor of algebra, although it is now known that his work is based on older Indian or Greek sources.[SUP]
[6][/SUP] He revised
Ptolemy's
Geography and wrote on astronomy and astrology.
Some words reflect the importance of al-Khwarizmi's contributions to mathematics. "Algebra" is derived from
al-jabr, one of the two operations he used to solve
quadratic equations.
Algorism and
algorithm stem from
Algoritmi, the
Latin form of his name.[SUP]
[7][/SUP] His name is also the origin of (
Spanish)
guarismo[SUP]
[8][/SUP] and of (
Portuguese)
algarismo, both meaning
digit