History of Algebra

The history of Algebra began in ancient Egypt and Babylon time. Diophantus of Alexandria wrote the first treatise on Algebra in the 3rd century A.D. The term derives from Arabic or literally “the reunion of broken parts”. As well as its mathematical meaning, the word also means the surgical treatment of fractures. Ancient civilizations wrote out algebraic expressions using only occasional abbreviations, but by medieval times Islamic mathematicians were able to talk about arbitrarily high powers of the unknown “x”, and work out the basic algebra of polynomials (with out yet using modern symbolism). This included the ability to multiply; divide, and find square roots of polynomials as well as knowledge of the binomial theorem. The Persian Mathematicians, astronomer, and poet Omar Khayyam showed how to express roots of cubic equations by line segments obtained by interesting conic sections, but he could not find a formula for the roots. Early in the 16th century, the Italia...