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Biography of Abu 'Ali al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham
Name: Abu 'Ali al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham
Birth Date: c. 966
Death Date: 1039
Place of Birth: Basra, Iraq
Nationality: Arab
Gender: Male
Occupations: scientist, physicist, astronomer, mathematician
Abu 'Ali al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham
The Arab physicist, astronomer, and mathematician Abu 'Ali al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham (ca. 966-1039), or Alhazen, established the theory of vision that prevailed till the 17th century. He also defended a theory of the physical reality of Ptolemy's planetary models.Al-Hasan was born at Basra in southern Iraq, where he must have received all his education. He gained sufficient fame for his knowledge of physics in his youth that he was called to Egypt by the Fatimid ruler al-Hakim to attempt to regulate the flow of the Nile. Failing in this effort, he was disgraced and established himself as a copyist of mathematical manuscripts; there still exists in Istanbul a manuscript of the Banu Musa's version of Apollonius's Conics copied by him in 1024. He continued to practice the scribal art in Cairo for the remainder of his life.He did not cease to pursue his scientific studies, however, and published a large …showed first 150 words…
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…showed last 150 words…physics, seems certainly to have been the greatest Moslem student of physical theory, with the possible exception of the less well-known Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi. It is unjustified to be too emphatic about his originality until more is known about his predecessors. His contributions to science were, however, uniformly of the highest order. Further Reading The best book on al-Hasan is in German: Matthias Schramm, Ibn al-Haythams Weg zur Physik (1963). Scholarly background works in English are Charles Singer, ed., Studies in the History and Method of Science, vol. 2 (1921); A. C. Crombie, Medieval and Early Modern Science, vol. 1: Science in the Middle Ages: V-XIII Centuries (1959; originally published as Augustine to Galileo: The History of Science, A.D. 400-1650, 1952); and Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Science and Civilization, in Islam (1968). George Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science, vol. 1: From Homer to Omar Khayyam (1927), includes a survey of the state of science in the 11th century.
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