Modern Algebra
Another key event in the further development of algebra was the general algebraic solution of the cubic and quartic equations, developed in the mid-16th century. The idea of a determinant was developed by Japanese mathematician Kowa Seki in the 17th century, followed by Gottfried Leibniz ten years later, for the purpose of solving systems of simultaneous linear equations using matrices. Gabriel Cramer also did some work on matrices and determinants in the 18th century.
The symbol commonly denotes an unknown variable. Even though any letter can be used, is the most common choice. The tradition of using to represent unknowns was started by Rene Descartes in his La geometrie (1637). In mathematics, an “italicized x” is often used to avoid potential confusion with the multiplication symbol.
Read more about this topic: History Of Elementary Algebra
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