Mathematician:Abu Kamil

Mathematician
Egyptian mathematician during the Islamic Golden Age.

Considered the first mathematician to systematically use and accept irrational numbers as solutions and coefficients to equations.

His mathematical techniques were later adopted by Fibonacci, thus allowing Abu Kamil an important part in introducing algebra to Europe.

Nationality
Egyptian

History

 * Born: c. 850
 * Died: c. 930

Publications

 * c. 900: (Book of Rare Things in the Art of Calculation)
 * c. 900: (Book of Birds)


 * Kitāb fī al-jabr wa al-muqābala (Book of Algebra)
 * Kitāb al-mukhammas wa'al-mu'ashshar (On the Pentagon and Decagon)
 * Kitāb al-misāḥa wa al-handasa (On Measurement and Geometry)

Lost works
Some of Abu Kamil's lost works include:


 * Kitāb al-khaṭaʾayn (Book of the Two Errors), a treatise on the use of double false position
 * Kitāb al-jamʿ wa al-tafrīq (Book on Augmentation and Diminution) which gained more attention after historian Franz Woepcke linked it with an anonymous Latin work, Liber augmenti et diminutionis
 * Kitāb al-waṣāyā bi al-jabr wa al-muqābala (Book of Estate Sharing using Algebra), which contains algebraic solutions for problems of Islamic inheritance and discusses the opinions of known jurists

Also known as

 * Full name: Abū Kāmil Shujāʿ ibn Aslam ibn Muḥammad Ibn Shujāʿ
 * Latinized: Auoquamel
 * Arabic: أبو كامل شجاع بن أسلم بن محمد بن شجاع‎


 * Also known as al-ḥāsib al-miṣrī ("the Egyptian reckoner")