Who was Diophantus?

Diophantus was a famous ancient Greek mathematician living in Alexandria during the 3rd century AD.

Diophantus is often called the Father of Algebra, although the kind of algebra that Diophantus worked with is quite different from the algebra that you learned in High School. The kind that you learned in High School was invented by Arab mathematicians hundreds of years later.

Both kinds of algebra are similar in that both deal with story problems that can be written as equations that need to be solved for unknown variables. However, Diophantine Equations (which is the name we give today to the equations studied by Diophantus) also require that the solutions be whole numbers. These types of equations are harder to solve than the ones you learned in High School.

Diophantus' greatest contribution to civilization is his book Arithmetica which is all about Diophantine Equations.

Actually, very little is known about the life of Diophantus. However, you can figure out how old he was when he died if you can solve the story problem that was written on his tombstone.