The letter x often symbolizes something unknown, with an air of mystery that can be appealing – just look at Elon Musk with SpaceX, Tesla’s Model X, and now X as a new name for Twitter. You ...

The letter X is key to modern algebra. But no one knows why. Skip to main content. Scientific American. August 10, 2023. 5 min read. The Mysterious Origins of ‘X’ in Algebra.

The letter “x” often symbolizes something unknown, with an air of mystery that can be appealing. Just look at Elon Musk with SpaceX , Tesla’s Model X and now X as the new name of Twitter .

While this is absolutely true, “advanced algebra” is presumably the actual mathematical field also known as “abstract algebra” - the study of groups, rings, fields, Galois theory, etc. In fact the ...

Letter: Algebra of the universe. Published 9 April 2008. From Martin Baker . Two apparently disjoint subjects discussed in the same issue – quantum uncertainty and the Riemann hypothesis ...