Abu'l-Hasan al-Uqlidisi

Abu'l-Hasan al-Uqlidisi

Abū al-Ḥassan, Aḥmad Ibn Ibrāhīm, al-Uqlīdisī (Arabic: أبو الحسن أحمد بن ابراهيم الإقليدسي, fl. 952) was a mathematician of the Islamic Golden Age, possibly from Damascus, who wrote the earliest surviving book on the use of decimal fractions with Hindu–Arabic numerals, Kitāb al-Fuṣūl fī al-Ḥisāb al-Hindī (The Book of Chapters on Hindu Arithmetic), in Arabic in 952. The book is well preserved in a single 12th century manuscript, but other than the author's name, original year of publication (341 AH, 952/3 AD) and the place (Damascus) we know nothing else about the author: after an extensive survey of extant reference material, mathematical historian Ahmad Salīm Saʿīdān, who discovered the manuscript in 1960, could find no other mention of him. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Abu'l-Hasan al-Uqlidisi has received more than 64,536 page views. His biography is available in 15 different languages on Wikipedia. Abu'l-Hasan al-Uqlidisi is the 750th most popular mathematician (down from 703rd in 2019).