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Category Archives: Astronomy Scientists

Astronomy Scientists

Abu Ja’far Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi

04-Jul-09

Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi

Al-Khwarizmi was born in the epicentre of an Islamic empire which then stretched from the Mediterranean to India. This was a very fortuitous time for Arabic learning. The rulers of the Abbasid dynasty who were leading this huge empire, founded an academy in Baghdad called the House of Wisdom where the learned men collected and translated all the scientific works that they could get hold of. House of Wisdom had a large library – first famous library established after the library of Alexandria was destroyed.

Al-Khwarizmi was one of the learned men who worked in the House of Wisdom. His interests lied in the fields of algebra, geometry, astronomy and geography. His now most famous work is that from which we got the name for algebra itself – Hisab al-jabr w’al-muqabala.

Abu Ja’far Muḥammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (c. 780, Khwarizm – c. 850) was a Persian mathematician, astronomer, and geographer, who worked most of his life as a scholar in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad.

His Algebra was the first book on the systematic solution of linear and quadratic equations. Consequently he is considered to be the father of algebra, a title he shares with Diophantus. Latin translations of his Arithmetic, on the Indian numerals, introduced the decimal positional number system to the Western world in the twelfth century. He revised and updated Ptolemy’s Geography as well as writing several works on astronomy and astrology.

Isaac Newton – The Most Famous Physics Scientist

10-Dec-08

Sir Isaac Newton

English physicist and mathematician who was born into a poor farming family. Luckily for humanity, Newton was not a good farmer, and was sent to Cambridge to study to become a preacher. At Cambridge, Newton studied mathematics, being especially strongly influenced by Euclid, although he was also influenced by Baconian and Cartesian philosophies. Newton was forced to leave Cambridge when it was closed because of the plague, and it was during this period that he made some of his most significant discoveries. With the reticence he was to show later in life, Newton did not, however, publish his results.

Sir Isaac Newton, FRS (4 January 1643 - 31 March 1727 was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, theologian and one of the most influential men in human history. His Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, published in 1687, is considered to be the most influential book in the history of science. In this work, Newton described universal gravitation and the three laws of motion, laying the groundwork for classical mechanics, which dominated the scientific view of the physical universe for the next three centuries and is the basis for modern engineering. Newton showed that the motions of objects on Earth and of celestial bodies are governed by the same set of natural laws by demonstrating the consistency between Kepler’s laws of planetary motion and his theory of gravitation, thus removing the last doubts about heliocentrism and advancing the scientific revolution.
In mechanics, Newton enunciated the principles of conservation of momentum and angular momentum. In optics, he built the first “practical” reflecting telescope[6] and developed a theory of colour based on the observation that a prism decomposes white light into a visible spectrum. He also formulated an empirical law of cooling and studied the speed of sound.

In mathematics, Newton shares the credit with Gottfried Leibniz for the development of the differential and integral calculus. He also demonstrated the generalised binomial theorem, developed the so-called “Newton’s method” for approximating the zeroes of a function, and contributed to the study of power series.

Galileo Galilei – Father of Modern Science

08-Dec-08

Galileo GalileiItalian scientist and philosopher. Galileo was a true Renaissance man, excelling at many different endeavors, including lute playing and painting. He attended medical school in Padua. While in a cathedral, he noticed that a chandelier was swinging with the same period as timed by his pulse, regardless of its amplitude. He began to study the isochronism of the pendulum Eric Weisstein’s World of Physics in 1581, as well as the motion of bodies. Using an inclined plane, he showed that all bodies fall at the same rate. He also investigated cohesion, Eric Weisstein’s World of Physics and concluded that a waterfall breaks when the weight of the water Eric Weisstein’s World of Physics becomes too great, the same reason that water Eric Weisstein’s World of Physics pumps could only raise water by 34 feet.

Galileo Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) was a Tuscan (Italian) physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the Scientific Revolution. His achievements include improvements to the telescope and consequent astronomical observations, and support for Copernicanism. Galileo has been called the “father of modern observational astronomy”, the “father of modern physics“, the “father of science“, and “the Father of Modern Science.” The motion of uniformly accelerated objects, taught in nearly all high school and introductory college physics courses, was studied by Galileo as the subject of kinematics. His contributions to observational astronomy include the telescopic confirmation of the phases of Venus, the discovery of the four largest satellites of Jupiter, named the Galilean moons in his honour, and the observation and analysis of sunspots. Galileo also worked in applied science and technology, improving compass design.

Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi – The Father of Modern Surgery

11-Sep-07

Abu al-Qasim Khalaf ibn al-Abbas Al-Zahrawi (936 – 1013), (Arabic: أبو القاسم بن خلف بن العباس الزهراوي) also known in the West as Abulcasis, was an Andalusian-Arab physician, surgeon, and scientist. He is considered the father of modern surgery, and as Islam’s greatest medieval surgeon, whose comprehensive medical texts, combining Islamic medicine and Greco-Roman teachings, shaped both Islamic and European surgical procedures up until the Renaissance. His greatest contribution to history is the Kitab al-Tasrif, a thirty-volume encyclopedia of medical practices.

Biography

abu al-qasim al-zahrawiAbu al-Qasim was born in the city of El Zahra, six miles northwest of Cordoba, Spain. He was descended from the Ansar Arab tribe who settled earlier in Spain. Few details remain regarding his life, aside from his published work, due to the destruction of El-Zahra during later Spanish-Moorish conflicts. His name first appears in the writings of Abu Muhammad bin Hazm (993 – 1064), who listed him among the greatest physicians of Moorish Spain. But we have the first detailed biography of El-Zahrawi from al-Humaydi’s Jadhwat al-Muqtabis (On Andalusian Savants), completed six decades after El-Zahrawi’s death.

In El-Zahra, he lived most of his life. It is also where he studied, taught and practised medicine and surgery until shortly before his death in about 1013, two years after the sacking of El-Zahra.

Works

Abu al-Qasim was a court physician to the Andalusian caliph Al-Hakam II. He devoted his entire life and genius to the advancement of medicine as a whole and surgery in particular. His best work was the Kitab al-Tasrif. It is a medical encyclopaedia spanning 30 volumes which included sections on surgery, medicine, orthopaedics, ophthalmology, pharmacology, nutrition etc.

In the 14th century,

Ibn Sina (Avicenna) – The Father of Modern Medicine

10-Sep-07

ibn sina the father of modern medicineAbu ʿAli al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allah ibn Sina (c. 980 in Afshana near Bukhara, Khorasan – 1037 in Hamedan), also known by his Latinized name Avicenna (Gr. Αβιτξιανός), was a Persian Muslim polymath: an astronomer, chemist, logician, mathematician, physicist, poet, scientist, theologian, statesman, soldier, and foremost physician and philosopher of his time.

He wrote some 450 books on a wide range of subjects, many of which concentrated on philosophy and medicine. His most famous works are The Book of Healing and The Canon of Medicine, which was a standard medical text at many Islamic and European universities up until the 18th century. Ibn Sina developed a medical system that combined his own personal experience with that of Islamic medicine, the medical system of Galen, Aristotelian metaphysics, and ancient Persian, Arabian and Indian medicine. Ibn Sina is regarded as the father of modern medicine, particularly for his introduction of systematic experimentation and quantification into the study of physiology, and for his discovery of the contagious nature of diseases. He is also considered the father of the fundamental concept of momentum in physics.

George Sarton, the father of the history of science, wrote in the Introduction to the History of Science:

“One of the most famous exponents of Muslim universalism and an eminent figure in Islamic learning was Ibn Sina, known in the West as Avicenna (981-1037). For a thousand years he has retained his original renown as one of the greatest thinkers and medical scholars in history. His most important medical works are the Qanun (Canon) and a treatise on Cardiac drugs. The ‘Qanun fi-l-Tibb’ is an immense encyclopedia of medicine. It contains some of the most illuminating thoughts pertaining to distinction of mediastinitis from pleurisy; contagious nature of phthisis; distribution of diseases by water and soil; careful description of skin troubles; of sexual diseases and perversions; of nervous ailments.

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