The first real scientist

It is al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham , without doubt, a great physicist who deserves to go into the annals of history alongside Newton for his scientific stature

Isaac Newton is, for many, the most important physicist of all time. At least, the undisputed father of modern optics, or so they tell us in school.

Children study textbooks abound in lenses and prisms of his famous experiment, studying the nature of light and reflection, refraction and decomposition of light into the colors of the rainbow.

However, the truth is a little more gray and is an important point: in the field of optics, Newton rests on the shoulders of a giant who lived 700 years before him.

Ibn al-Haytham was born in 965 BCE in what is now Iraq. Most of the Western world has not even heard of it. As a physicist I am, I am amazed at this man’s contribution to this branch of science.’

The popular account of the history of science typically suggest that no relevant progress took place between ancient Greece and Renaissance Europe.

 But just because Western countries believe that it is dark years, does not mean that such stagnation would also elsewhere in the world. In fact, between the ninth and thirteenth century given the golden age of Arabic science.

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Posted by Fouad Ashraf on Apr 27 2012. Filed under World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry