Researchers
al-Khwarizmi
Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, a scholar of Baghdad''s Abbasid House of Wisdom around 820: he authored the Book of al-Jabr wa-l-Muqabala, which gave mathematics its new science and its name, and he brought the Indian numerals — what we call Arabic numerals — to the Islamic world and then to Europe. From his name came the word ''algorithm'' on which every computer runs today. He also wrote on astronomy, geography and the earth''s surface. He died about 850 leaving a science that became the world''s language: ''algorithm'' and ''algebra'' from his name and his book together. Al-Khwarizmi was not one scholar but several in a single person: founding a new science of reckoning, writing star tables in astronomy, drawing the world's map in al-Ma'mun's day, and joining Greek geometry with Indian reckoning in one method that became modern mathematics' base.