al-Khwarizmi

Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (c. 780–850) was a Persian mathematician and astronomer who worked at the House of Wisdom in Baghdad under the Abbasid caliphs. His treatise al-Kitab al-mukhtasar fi hisab al-jabr wal-muqabala systematised methods for solving linear and quadratic equations, and it gave the discipline its name, algebra. His Latin translators transmitted his arithmetic as Algoritmi, from which the word algorithm derives. He also wrote on astronomy, geography, and calendrical computation, and his works shaped mathematics in both the Islamic world and medieval Europe.