A Mathematical past...

Calculus? Newton and Leibniz of course. Triangles…? a certain Greek comes to mind. Numbers!? Well they’ve been reinvented a lot more times than the wheel to say the least - Babylonians, Mayans, Egyptians, Chinese, Aboriginal tribes in Australia - the list goes on… After reading a book earlier this year, “The Crest of the Peacock”, I had a great insight into “non-Eurocentric” (as the book puts it) view to the history and development of mathematics… but one group of people stood out for me - the Islamic empire during the “Golden age of Islam” (700-1200s).

The discoveries made were huge, both in terms of the maths, and their impacts. Much of which was later translated into Western languages and upon which our modern idea of mathematics was built upon. A particular figure that I came across was Al-Khwarizmi, thought to be the founder of modern algebra. Don’t like algebra? WOW you don’t know what you’re missing - the applications are seemingly ‘limitless’… Algebra is the westernised word formed from “Al Jabr”, or reunion, in the sense that during algebra, different aspects are reunited together into one. Al-Khwarizmi’s book was later translated into Latin and was developed and is taught in schools to this day.

There is a lot to talk about, but there are also people who know much more about this topic than I, so instead of rambling on about the small shot of knowledge I’ve consumed with my research, I really do recommend the book “The Crest of the Peacock” - George Gheverghese Joseph, if you have had any interest in this topic.

A shorter article for today, I’ll leave you too it then!