Mathematics

A brief history of mathematics as used in technologies follows. Algebra with geometry was used by Egyptians and Babylonians by 1650 BCE to solve linear and quadratic equations. Algebra without geometry was used to solve math problems first by the Greek mathematician, Diophantus, in 250 CE. The word "algebra" come from the title of a text book in the subject, Hisab al-jabr w'al muqabala, written about 830 CE by the astronomer/mathematician Mohammed ibn-Musa al-Khowarizmi. By 1545, European mathematicians could solve cubic and quartic equations using algebra. in 1591, the French mathematician, François Viète used letters of the alphabet (x's and y's) to symbolize unknowns in algebra. This saved considerable time, since before this time algebra was expressed in ordinary language, which was cumbersome. In 1637, René Descartes, a French mathematician, combined algebra and geometry into a system we call analytic geometry. Probability theory was invented by the French mathematicians, Fermat and Pascal in 1654. The English physicist, Issac Newton, and the German mathematician, Gottfried Leibnitz, independently invented the calculus in 1669. ^{Asimov 124-180} The theory of functions and use of differential equations were invented by at various times in the 18th century by Euler, d'Alembert, Laplace, and Lagrange.