Al-Khwarizmi, Mathematician
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Father of the AlgorithmThe
what? An algorithm is the step-by-step math procedure for working
a problem. You can see the division algorithm on the right.
In fact, it's named after Al-Khwarizmi. Even our numbers
were introduced by Al-Khwarizmi. He adopted and popularized the Hindi
number system, which was based on decimals (tens) and introduced the
number zero. Try doing this with Roman numerals!
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Father of AlgebraAlgebra comes from the Arabic word al-jabr,
meaning "putting together missing parts." Letters are used to
represent variable numbers. Al-Khwarizmi drew on the earlier work
of Hindi and Greek mathematicians for his book on algebra. |  |