Algebra was not “made” by a single person; it grew over thousands of years, but most historians credit the Persian mathematician al-Khwarizmi (9th century) as the key founder of what we now call algebra.

Quick Scoop: Who “Made” Algebra?

  • Ancient beginnings:
    Basic algebraic ideas (solving unknowns, working with equations) go back to Babylonian and Egyptian mathematics around 1900–1600 BCE, where scribes solved problems that today we’d write as equations.
  • Greek contributions:
    Greek mathematicians like Diophantus of Alexandria (around 3rd century CE) wrote Arithmetica , using symbolic methods to solve number problems; he’s often called the “father of algebra” in the Greek tradition.
  • Al-Khwarizmi’s big leap:
    In the 9th century, Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi wrote Al-Kitab al-Jabr wa-l-Muqabala (“The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing”), which systematically treated linear and quadratic equations as a separate, organized subject.
* The word **“algebra”** comes from _al-jabr_ in this book’s title.

* Because he treated algebra as an independent discipline with general methods, he’s widely described as the **“father of algebra.”**

Later upgrades

  • Symbolic style: Mathematicians like François Viète and René Descartes (16th–17th centuries) developed the modern symbolic notation (using letters like x, y, a, b), turning algebra into the abstract symbolic system you see in school today.
  • Abstract algebra: In the 19th–20th centuries, algebra expanded into groups, rings, and fields , going far beyond simple equations.

Simple way to remember it

  • Early problem-solvers (Babylonians, Egyptians) used algebra-like methods.
  • Diophantus developed early symbolic algebra.
  • Al-Khwarizmi organized it into a clear subject and gave it its name , so he’s the usual answer to “who made algebra?”

If someone asks you “who made algebra,” the historically safest short answer is:
“It has ancient roots, but the mathematician al-Khwarizmi is usually called the father of algebra.”

TL;DR: Algebra slowly evolved from ancient civilizations, but al- Khwarizmi’s 9th‑century book Al-Jabr is why we say he “made” algebra in the form we recognize today.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.