A fascinating history of the word "algorithm."
‘Algorithm’ is a word that actually dates back 900 years. The word comes from the name of a Persian mathematical genius, who came up with the Hindu-Arabic number system along with the decimal point, the concepts of algebra, and made innovative contributions to multi subjects: Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi.
‘Algoritmi’ is the Latinised version of his name ‘al-Khwarizmi’. And this is the origin of the word algorithm.
In medieval Latin, algorismus simply meant the decimal number system. By the 13th Century, it had become an English word, but it wasn’t until the late 19th century that algorithm came to mean a set of step-by-step rules for solving a problem.
In the early part of the 20th Century, Alan Turing, the father of modern computer science, worked out how in theory, a machine could follow algorithmic instructions and solve complex mathematics.
Now it becoming a word that gradually transforming our lives.
