Algebra, branch of mathematics in which arithmetical operations and formal manipulations are applied to abstract symbols rather than specific numbers. The notion that there exists such a distinct subdiscipline of mathematics, as well as the term algebra to denote it, resulted from a slow historical development.

The word algebra comes from the Arabic الجبر (al-jabr lit. "the restoring of broken parts") from the title of the early 9th century book cIlm al-jabr wa l-muqābala "The Science of Restoring and Balancing" by the Persian mathematician and astronomer al-Khwarizmi. In his work, the term al-jabr referred to the operation of moving a term from one side of an equation to the other, "balancing" referred to adding equal terms to both sides.

Shortened to just algeber or algebra in Latin, the word eventually entered the English language during the fifteenth century, from either Spanish, Italian, or Medieval Latin. It originally referred to the surgical procedure of setting broken or dislocated bones. The mathematical meaning was first recorded (in English) in the sixteenth century.

Credits :

Readium is available under BSD 3-Clause license

Boundless (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0))