Father of Al-gorithm

‘Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi‘ also known as al-Khwarizmi was born in Baghdad in 780 AD and died in 850 AD. He was a Persian mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and scholar who lived in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad. He is called the Father of Algorithm and Algebra because he first wrote algorithm’s definitions and algebra’s equations and formulas in his book.

Because he invented the algorithm, it preserves his identity in its name. His name was Al-Khwarizmi, which is a Persian name, now changing to Latin, then it will be ‘algorithmi’, now this Latin name changed to English, then it will be algorithm.

By the way, how do you pronounce ‘Algorithm’? al·guh·ri·dhm or el·guh·ri·dhm? Many students will say that el·guh·ri·dhm, but the right pronunciation is al·guh·ri·dhm. Why is that so? In Arabic, the names of al-Habibi, Al-hamdulillah, and Al-Jazeera, (news channel) must have been heard. Al means ‘The’ in English. So, whenever you say the name of the algorithm, you will use the right pronunciation. Apart from this, the name “algebra” is derived from a very famous book by al-Khwarizmi. The name of that book is “Al-Kitab al-mukhtasar fi hisab al-jabr wa’l-muqabala,”. Algebra was formed from al-jabr and al-Khwarizmi from Algorithm.

Counting Method

Apart from this, I want to tell you one more thing that is related to al-Khwarizmi. In mathematics, we use the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4,…, 8, 9, and 0. Where did counting come from? Five thousand years ago, there were two civilizations: the Egyptians and the Sumerians. They also had a count. After that, the Babylonians came, who also took the same count.

If you look at the diagram, you will notice that there is no symbol of 0, or should I say sign, of 0. 0 was used only as a placeholder. After that, the same counting reached India, and Aryabhatta, a famous mathematician, gave a symbol of 0. He made a point (.) and called it zero. We can also see this 0 in the Bhakehali Manuscript. This knowledge then spread to the Arab world, and when al-Khwarijmi studied the Hindu Manuscript, he discovered algebra and algorithms. He made zero, as we read today. He gave it an oval shape, and there is also a reason behind this.

If 1 is to be written, then only 1 angle has to be used, if 2 is to be used, then 2 angles are to be in the symbol, and if 0 is to be written, then there are no angles anywhere in that sign.

Al-Khwarizmi called “0”, sifr, which later formed the cipher of cryptography.