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Beginning over 4000 years ago, the Babylonians were discovering how to use mathematics to perform functions of daily life and to evolve as a dominant civilization.
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Al Khwarizmi developed methods for balancing and reducing algebraic equations and introduced algorithms, which are mathematical operations or rules.
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German mathematician Carl Friederich Gauss proves the fundamental theorem of algebra.
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Classical algebra was first developed by the ancient Babylonians, who had a system similar to our algebra. They were able to solve for unknown quantities (variables) and had formulas and equations. This may seem elementary, but many advanced civilizations solved such problems geometrically because it was more visual. This is similar to the idea of graphing two linear equations to see where they intersect rather than directly solving for the solution.
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Diophantus wrote 13 books entitled 'Arithmetica', which contain problems and solutions that have furthered algebraic notation.
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The word “Algebra” literally means the re-union of broken parts based on the origins of Arabic language. It was first used around 800AD by Arabic scholars, and is still in our language today.
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Al-Samawal defines algebra as it is concerned with operating on unknowns using all the arithmetical tools, in the same way as the arithmetician operates on the known.
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Symbols were used to represent unknown quantities. (Variables) At this point, equations look most similar to what we see in modern algebra.
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Modern Algebra has come into existence much more recently, emerging over the past 200 years.
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Since the beginning of the 1800s, about half a million Babylonian tablets have been discovered, fewer than five hundred of which are mathematical in nature.
