Real number
History

The Middle Ages brought about the acceptance of zero, negative numbers, integers, and fractional numbers, first by Indian and Chinese mathematicians, and then by Arabic mathematicians, who were also the first to treat irrational numbers as algebraic objects (the latter being made possible by the development of algebra). Arabic mathematicians merged the concepts of " number " and " magnitude " into a more general idea of real numbers. The Egyptian mathematician Abū Kāmil Shujā ibn Aslam (c. 850–930) was the first to accept irrational numbers as solutions to quadratic equations, or as coefficients in an equation (often in the form of square roots, cube roots, and fourth roots). In Europe, such numbers, not commensurable with the numerical unit, were called irrational or surd ("deaf").
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