"Admitting the Hindu and Alexandrian authors [such as Diophantus], to be nearly equally ancient, it must be conceded in favor of the Indian algebraist, that he was more advanced in the science […] In the whole science [of algebra], he [Diophantus] is very far behind the Hindu writers […] he is hardly to be considered as the inventor, since he seems to treat the art as already known."
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Diophantus
Diophantus of Alexandria (c. 201 - 285 AD) sometimes called "the father of algebra", was an Alexandrian Greek mathematician and the author of a series of books called Arithmetica (c. 250 AD), many of which are now lost. Diophantus was the first Greek mathematician who recognized fractions as numbers, thus allowed positive rational numbers for the coefficients and solutions.
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