Abū Kāmil Shujā ibn Aslam

transl|ar|ALA|Abū Kāmil Shujāʿ ibn Aslam ibn Muḥammad ibn Shujā (c. 850 – c. 930) ( _ar. ابو كامل) for short, was an Egyptian Muslim mathematician during the Islamic Golden Age. He has also been called "al-Hasib al-Misri"—literally, "the Egyptian calculator."

Unlike the many polymaths of this era—notably al-Khwarizmi, al-Kindi, Ibn al-Haytham (Alhacen in the West), al-Biruni, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), and Ibn Rushd (Averroes)—Abu Kamil was a specialist. His field was algebra. His "Book on rare things in the art of calculation" treated systems of equations whose solutions are whole numbers or fractions and also combinatorics. This work led to later research into the real numbers, solutions of polynomials, and finding roots by later scientists of the age such as al-Karaji and Ibn Yaḥyā al-Maghribī al-Samawʾal. His work "The Book of Precious Things in the Art of Reckoning" contains general methods for solving linear equations.

He was also the first to treat irrational numbers as algebraic objects. [MacTutor|class=HistTopics|id=Arabic_mathematics|title=Arabic mathematics: forgotten brilliance?|year=1999] He was the first to accept irrational numbers (often in the form of a square root, cube root or fourth root) as solutions to quadratic equations or as coefficients in an equation. [Jacques Sesiano, "Islamic mathematics", p. 148, in citation|title=Mathematics Across Cultures: The History of Non-western Mathematics|first1=Helaine|last1=Selin|first2=Ubiratan|last2=D'Ambrosio|year=2000|publisher= [Springer Science+Business Media|Springer|isbn=1402002602]

References

* cite encyclopedia
last = Levey
first = Martin
title = Abū Kāmil Shujāʿ ibn Aslam ibn Muḥammad ibn Shujā
encyclopedia = Dictionary of Scientific Biography
volume = 1
pages = 30-32
publisher = Charles Scribner's Sons
location = New York
date = 1970
isbn = 0684101149
*
*Djebbar, Ahmed. "Une histoire de la science arabe": Entretiens avec Jean Rosmorduc. Seuil (2001)