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Image: Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī

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Description: Detail of a USSR stamp featuring Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi. Working at The House of Wisdom in Baghdad around 825, al-Khwarizmi wrote a book entitled "The Book of Addition and Subtraction According to the Hindu Calculation." It extolled the virtues of a base ten numbering system that uses a placeholder, known as a punta, or point, which became the zero. This numbering system swept through Muslim Empire to Europe and beyond. Today the Hindu-Arabic numbering system is used worldwide. Al-Kwarizmi wrote another book that changed mathematics forever: "The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing." Two of the words in the Arabic title are al-jabr, from which we derive the English word algebra. It is the symbolic language on which much of higher mathematics is based.
Title: Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī
Credit: http://www.storyofmathematics.com/islamic_alkhwarizmi.html
Author: ms
Usage Terms: Public domain
License: Public domain
Attribution Required?: No

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