Abu Rayḥan Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Biruni (September 15, 973 in Kath, Khwarezm – December 13, 1048 in Ghazni) was a Persian Muslim polymath of the 11th century, whose experiments and discoveries were as significant and diverse as those of Leonardo da Vinci or Galileo, five hundred years before the Renaissance; al-Biruni was well-known in the Muslim world, but unlike some of his other Muslim contemporaries (such as Abulcasis, Alhacen, and Avicenna), al-Biruni’s name was little known in the Western world.
He was a scientist and physicist, an anthropologist, an astronomer and astrologer, an encyclopedist and historian, a geographer, a geodesist and geologist, a mathematician, a pharmacist and physician, a philosopher and Ash’ari theologian, a scholar and teacher, and a traveller, who contributed greatly to all of these fields. He was also the first Muslim scholar to study India and the Brahminical tradition, and has been described as the father of Indology, the father of geodesy, and “the first anthropologist”. Along with Geber and Ibn al-Haytham, al-Biruni was also one of the earliest leading exponents of the experimental method, and the first to conduct elaborate experiments related to astronomical phenomena.
George Sarton, the father of the history of science, described al-Biruni as:
“One of the very greatest scientists of Islam, and, all considered, one of the greatest of all times.”
A. I. Sabra desribed al-Biruni as:
“One of the great scientific minds in all history.”
The Al-Biruni crater, on the Moon, is named after al-Biruni.
Biography
He was born in Khwarazm (formerly north-eastern part of the Persian Samanid dynasty) presently in Khiva, Uzbekistan. He studied mathematics and astronomy under Abu Nasr Mansur.
He was a colleague of the fellow Persian Muslim philosopher and physician Abu Ali ibn Sina (Avicenna),
