Algebra wasn't born in a vacuum. It was forged by these 10 legendary, passionate, and often eccentric minds.

1. Al-Khwarizmi: The 9th-century Persian scholar considered the 'Father of Algebra.' His name gave us 'algorithm'.

2. Diophantus: The ancient Greek who took the first steps toward algebraic notation in his work 'Arithmetica'.

3. Brahmagupta: The 7th-century Indian genius who established the rules for operating with zero and negative numbers.

4. Fibonacci: The Italian who introduced the Hindu-Arabic numeral system to Europe, along with his famous sequence.

5. René Descartes: The French philosopher who brilliantly merged algebra and geometry, creating the Cartesian plane.

6. Leonhard Euler: The most prolific mathematician in history, he gave us much of the modern notation we use today, like f(x).

7. Carl Friedrich Gauss: The 'Prince of Mathematicians,' a child prodigy whose genius touched every field of math.

8. Niels Henrik Abel: The tragic Norwegian prodigy who did groundbreaking work on group theory before dying at 26.

9. Évariste Galois: The fiery French revolutionary who, on the night before he was killed in a duel, laid out the foundations of Galois Theory.