During his speech on June 4 in Cairo, Egypt, President Barack Obama gave credit to Muslims for invention of many things, including algebra. I would like to bring out the facts about the history of Algebra.

The credit for the first use of algebra probably goes to the Babylonians, who solved some quadratic problems verbally, but recognized only positive roots. During the time of Plato, Greeks used geometry to solve algebraic problems. Later, Diophantus (about 350 A.D.) wrote some rules for multiplication and division and solved some simple problems in "Arithmetica". His algebra was syncopated and rhetorical.

Indians have a long history of using mathematics.Fire altars were constructed using Pythagora's theorem long before Pythagoras. A decimal system for weights and measures was used in the Indus Valley (2500 B.C.). Numbers in multiples of 2, 7, 10, 100 and even one million are found in several books, including "Narad Vishnu Purana" (1000 B.C.), "Anuyog Dwara Sutra " (100 B.C.), "Lalitvistara" (100 A.D.) and several Mahayana Buddhist books. "Anuyog Dwara Sutra" also gives multiplication of square roots of square roots. Basic use of logarithm appears in "Satkhandagama" (150 A.D.).

The Bakhshali manuscript (200 A.D.) found near Peshawar in Pakistan includes fractions, square roots, quadratic equations, simultaneous equations, arithmetic and geometric progressions etc.

Aryabhatta (499 A.D.), a great Indian astronomer, wrote 118 verses in "Aryabhattiya" which cover several areas including arithmetic, algebra, plane and spherical trigonometry. It includes continued fractions, square roots, cube roots, quadratic equations, sum of power series and a table of sines. He introduced the Kuttaka method (breaking down of original factors into smaller numbers). He gave the circumference of Earth as 4,967 yojanas (24,835 miles) and stated that Earth moves around the sun long before Copernicus.

Brahmgupta (628 A.D.), another eminent Indian astronomer, wrote "Brahm-saphuta-siddhanta", containing 25 chapters in which he gave several rules for arithmetical operations involving zero. He solved several quadratic equations and gave both positive and negative roots. In his book, he also solves several indeterminate problems.