Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea

by Charles Seife

Al-Khowarizmi wrote several important books, like Al-jabr wa’l muqabala, a treatise on how to solve elementary equations; the Al-jabr in the title (which means something like “completion”) gave us the term algebra.

The Christians, cowed by the power of Greek philosophy, chose Aristotle over their Bible. The Muslims, on the other hand, made the opposite choice.

Zero and infinity are eternally locked in a struggle to engulf all the numbers.