Diophantus vs al khwarizmi biography
Both are dedicated to the Caliph. The treatise uses examples and real-life applications of mathematical functions, which distinguishes it from earlier works on the subject. The work, for example, contains sections on the use of algebra to settle inheritance, trade and surveying problems according to proportions prescribed by Islamic law.
Elements within the treatise can be traced from mathematics from early 2nd century BC Babylonia right through to Hellenistic , Hebrew and Hindu works. It is regarded to be the first book written on algebra. The book was later translated into Latin, a copy of which is kept in Cambridge. A unique Arabic copy was translated in and is housed in Oxford.
Al-Khwarizmi also contributed to other scientific subjects via other works. Al-Khwarizmi drew a square ab to represent , and on the four sids of this square he placed rectangles c , d , e , and f , each 2 units wide. To complete the larger square, one must add the four small corner squares each of which has an area of 6 units. Now, proving the equation with geometry.
First with a figure of this proof:. The geometric proofs for Chapters V and VI are somewhat more complicated. First the square ab represents and the rectangle bg represents 21 units. Then the large rectangle, comprising the square and the rectangle bg , must have an area equal to , so that the side ag or hd must be 10 units. But tl is 25, and the gnomon tenmlg is 21 since the gnomon is equal to the rectangle bg.
Hence, the square nc is 4, and its side ec is 2. There is also a link in which you can visit where this demonstration is first wrote in Arabic and then with a change of a letter you can see it translated into American. Al-Khwarizmi is also responsible for developing trigonometric tables containing sine functions. They were later used to help form tangent functions.
He also developed the calculus of two errors, which led him to the concept of differentiation.
Diophantus vs al khwarizmi biography
He was also an astronomer as mentioned previously, and he wrote a treatise on astronomy, and also a book on astronomical tables. It was not until his books on astronomy were translated into Latin that the West was introduced to these new scientific concepts. His work with geography also contributed a great deal to society. Al-Khwarizmi revised Ptolemy's views on geography.
He had seventy geographers working under his leadership, and they produced the first map of the known world in B. Al-Khwarizmi also was the first to attempt to get a measurement of the volume and circumference of the earth. It is perhaps the closest to Al-Khwarizmi's own writings. Al-Khwarizmi's work on arithmetic was responsible for introducing the Arabic numerals , based on the Hindu—Arabic numeral system developed in Indian mathematics , to the Western world.
This is the first of many Arabic Zijes based on the Indian astronomical methods known as the sindhind. In fact, the mean motions in the tables of al-Khwarizmi are derived from those in the "corrected Brahmasiddhanta" Brahmasphutasiddhanta of Brahmagupta. The work contains tables for the movements of the sun , the moon and the five planets known at the time.
This work marked the turning point in Islamic astronomy. Hitherto, Muslim astronomers had adopted a primarily research approach to the field, translating works of others and learning already discovered knowledge. The original Arabic version written c. It is a major reworking of Ptolemy 's second-century Geography , consisting of a list of coordinates of cities and other geographical features following a general introduction.
As Paul Gallez notes, this system allows the deduction of many latitudes and longitudes where the only extant document is in such a bad condition, as to make it practically illegible. Neither the Arabic copy nor the Latin translation include the map of the world; however, Hubert Daunicht was able to reconstruct the missing map from the list of coordinates.
Daunicht read the latitudes and longitudes of the coastal points in the manuscript, or deduced them from the context where they were not legible. He transferred the points onto graph paper and connected them with straight lines, obtaining an approximation of the coastline as it was on the original map. He did the same for the rivers and towns. He "depicted the Atlantic and Indian Oceans as open bodies of water , not land-locked seas as Ptolemy had done.
It describes the Metonic cycle , a year intercalation cycle; the rules for determining on what day of the week the first day of the month Tishrei shall fall; calculates the interval between the Anno Mundi or Jewish year and the Seleucid era ; and gives rules for determining the mean longitude of the sun and the moon using the Hebrew calendar.
No direct manuscript survives; however, a copy had reached Nusaybin by the 11th century, where its metropolitan bishop , Mar Elias bar Shinaya , found it. Elias's chronicle quotes it from "the death of the Prophet" through to AH, at which point Elias's text itself hits a lacuna. Other papers, such as one on the determination of the direction of Mecca , are on the spherical astronomy.
He wrote two books on using and constructing astrolabes. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read View source View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikiquote Wikisource Wikidata item. Persian polymath c. For other uses, see Al-Khwarizmi disambiguation. Mathematics astronomy geography.
Main article: Al-Jabr. Further information: Latin translations of the 12th century , Mathematics in medieval Islam , and Science in the medieval Islamic world. Further information: Astronomy in the medieval Islamic world. Ibn Khaldun notes in his Prolegomena: "The first to write on this discipline [algebra] was Abu 'Abdallah al-Khuwarizmi. After him, there was Abu Kamil Shuja' b.
People followed in his steps. Saidan states that it should be understood as arithmetic done "in the Indian way", with Hindu-Arabic numerals, rather than as simply "Indian arithmetic". The Arab mathematicians incorporated their own innovations in their texts. In Gillispie, Charles Coulston ed. Dictionary of Scientific Biography. ISBN In Gibb, H.
The Encyclopaedia of Islam. IV 2nd ed. Leiden: Brill. OCLC The Art of Computer Programming. Retrieved 10 December The word al-jabr presumably meant something like "restoration" or "completion" and seems to refer to the transposition of subtracted terms to the other side of an equation; the word muqabalah is said to refer to "reduction" or "balancing" — that is, the cancellation of like terms on opposite sides of the equation.
The Voyage and the Messenger: Iran and Philosophy. North Atlantic. Archived from the original on 28 March Retrieved 19 October A History of Mathematics , p. Princeton University Press. Archived from the original PDF on 27 March The Oxford History of Islam. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 29 September Al-Khwarizmi is often considered the founder of algebra, and his name gave rise to the term algorithm.
Encyclopaedia of Islam 3rd ed. Rosen's translation of al-Khwarizmi's own words describing the purpose of the book tells us that al-Khwarizmi intended to teach [ 11 ] see also [ 1 ] This does not sound like the contents of an algebra text and indeed only the first part of the book is a discussion of what we would today recognise as algebra.
However it is important to realise that the book was intended to be highly practical and that algebra was introduced to solve real life problems that were part of everyday life in the Islam empire at that time. Early in the book al-Khwarizmi describes the natural numbers in terms that are almost funny to us who are so familiar with the system, but it is important to understand the new depth of abstraction and understanding here [ 11 ] :- When I consider what people generally want in calculating, I found that it always is a number.
I also observed that every number is composed of units, and that any number may be divided into units. Moreover, I found that every number which may be expressed from one to ten, surpasses the preceding by one unit: afterwards the ten is doubled or tripled just as before the units were: thus arise twenty, thirty, etc. Having introduced the natural numbers, al-Khwarizmi introduces the main topic of this first section of his book, namely the solution of equations.
His equations are linear or quadratic and are composed of units, roots and squares. However, although we shall use the now familiar algebraic notation in this article to help the reader understand the notions, Al-Khwarizmi's mathematics is done entirely in words with no symbols being used. He first reduces an equation linear or quadratic to one of six standard forms: 1.
Squares equal to roots. Squares equal to numbers. Roots equal to numbers. Squares and roots equal to numbers; e. Squares and numbers equal to roots; e. Roots and numbers equal to squares; e. References show.