From Baghdad to modern math: the twin origins of algebra and algorithm
The article traces algebra to al-Khwarizmi’s 9th‑century Baghdad treatise on calculation by completion and balancing, and shows how the word algorithm comes from the Latinized form of his name in a separate Hindu-Arabic arithmetic text; it also explains how al-Khwarizmi blended Greek geometry with Indian numerals at the House of Wisdom, how his work spread to Europe via translators, and how the terms for both the field and computational procedure evolved into their modern meanings.
