Why are algorithms called algorithms? A brief history of the Persian polymath you’ve likely never...

I think Vic might have known him personally.
Al-Khwārizmī lived from 780 to 850 CE, during the Islamic Golden Age. He is considered the “father of algebra”, and for some, the “grandfather of computer science”.

Yet, few details are known about his life. Many of his original works in Arabic have been lost to time.
It is believed al-Khwārizmī was born in the Khwarazm region south of the Aral Sea in present-day Uzbekistan. He lived during the Abbasid Caliphate, which was a time of remarkable scientific progress in the Islamic Empire.
Al-Khwārizmī made important contributions to mathematics, geography, astronomy and trigonometry. To help provide a more accurate world map, he corrected Alexandrian polymath Ptolemy’s classic cartography book, Geographia.
He produced calculations for tracking the movement of the Sun, Moon and planets. He also wrote about trigonometric functions and produced the first table of tangents.