Maths in the Early Islamic World
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how mathematicians in the Islamic world, from C8th-C15th, developed new ideas and synthesised ideas from Greek and Indian maths.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the flourishing of maths in the early Islamic world, as thinkers from across the region developed ideas in places such as Baghdad's House of Wisdom. Among them were the Persians Omar Khayyam, who worked on equations, and Al-Khwarizmi, latinised as Algoritmi and pictured above, who is credited as one of the fathers of algebra, and the Jewish scholar Al-Samawal, who converted to Islam and worked on mathematical induction. As well as the new ideas, there were many advances drawing on Indian, Babylonian and Greek work and, thanks to the recording or reworking by mathematicians in the Islamic world, that broad range of earlier maths was passed on to western Europe for further study.
With
Colva Roney-Dougal
Reader in Pure Mathematics at the University of St Andrews
Peter Pormann
Professor of Classics & Graeco-Arabic Studies at the University of Manchester
And
Jim Al-Khalili
Professor of Physics at the University of Surrey
Producer: Simon Tillotson.
Last on
Clip
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The three types of zero
Duration: 02:46
LINKS AND FURTHER READING
Useful websites:
- History of Philosophy without any gaps (Kings College London)
β The Story of Mathematics
MacTutor archive
β Wikipedia
Μύ
READING LIST:
Jim Al-Khalili, Pathfinders: The Golden Age of Arabic Science (Penguin, 2012)
Muhammad b. MΕ«sa al-KhwΔrizmi (trans. F. Rosen), The Algebra of Muhammad ibn MΕ«sa (Oriental Translation Fund, 1831)
J. L. Berggren, Episodes in the Mathematics of Medieval Islam (Springer, 2013)
J. N. Crossley, The Emergence of Number (World Scientific, 1987)
Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture (Routledge, 1998)
George Gheverghese Joseph, The Crest of the Peacock: Non-European Roots of Mathematics (Princeton University Press, 2010)
Victor J. Katz, A History of Mathematics: An Introduction (Pearson, 1998)
Otto Neugebauer, The Exact Sciences in Antiquity (Brown University Press, 1957)
Roshdi Rashed, The Development of Arabic Mathematics: Between Arithmetic and Algebra (Springer, 1994)
Roshdi Rashed, Al Khwarizmi: The Beginnings of Algebra (Saqi Books, 2009)
George Saliba, Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance (MIT Press, 2007)
Credits
| Role | Contributor |
|---|---|
| Presenter | Melvyn Bragg |
| Interviewed Guest | Colva Roney-Dougal |
| Interviewed Guest | Peter Pormann |
| Interviewed Guest | Jim Al-Khalili |
| Producer | Simon Tillotson |
Broadcasts
- Thu 16 Feb 2017 09:00ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 4
- Thu 16 Feb 2017 21:30ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 4
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