Skip to content

Scientists Make First Human Embryo Clones

18-Jan-08

Scientists at a California company reported yesterday they had created the first mature cloned human embryos from single skin cells taken from adults, a significant advance toward the goal of growing personalized stem cells for patients suffering from various diseases.

Creation of the embryos — grown from cells taken from the company’s chief executive and one of its investors — also offered sobering evidence that few, if any, technical barriers may remain to the creation of cloned babies. That reality could prompt renewed controversy on Capitol Hill, where the debate over human cloning has died down of late.

Five of the new embryos grew in laboratory dishes to the stage that fertility doctors consider ready for transfer to a woman’s womb — a degree of development that clones of adult humans have never achieved before.

No one knows if those embryos were healthy enough to grow into babies. But the study leader, who is also the medical director of a fertility clinic, said they looked robust, even as he emphasized that he has no interest in cloning people.

“It’s unethical and it’s illegal and we hope no one else does it either,” said Samuel H. Wood, chief executive of Stemagen in La Jolla, whose skin cells were cloned and who led the study with Andrew J. French, the firm’s scientific officer.

More…

Filed in Science Experiments, Science News | Tagged , | Comments (0) »

Ahmed ibn Yusuf - An Arab Mathematics Scientist

11-Sep-07

Ahmed ibn Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Tammam al-siddiq Al-Baghdadi also known as Ahmed ibn Yusuf al-misri (835 - 912) was an Arab mathematician, like his father Yusuf ibn Ibrahim (Arabic يوسف بن ابراهيم الصدَيق البغدادي ).


Life

Ahmed ibn Yusuf was born in Baghdad (today in Iraq) and moved with his father to Damascus in 839. He later moved to Cairo, but the exact date is unknown: since he was also known as al-Misri, which means the Egyptian, this probably happened at an early age. Eventually, he also died in Cairo. He probably grew up in a strongly intellectual environment: his father worked on Mathematics, Astronomy and Medicine, produced astronomical tables and was a member of a group of scholars. He achieved an important role in Egypt, which was caused by Egypt’s relative independence from the Abbasid Caliph.


Work

For some of the work attributed to Ahmed, it is not exactly clear whether he More…

Filed in Foreign Scientists, Mathematics Scientists, Moslem Scientists, Scientists | Tagged , | Comments (0) »

Ahmed Bin Majid - The Sea’s Lion

11-Sep-07

Ahmed Bin Majid (Arabic:أحمد بن ماجد) (c.1432 - ?), was an Arab navigator and cartographer born in 1421 in Julphar, which is now known as Ras Al Khaimah. This city makes up one of the seven emirates of the United Arab Emirates. He was raised with a family famous for seafaring; at the age of 17 he was able to navigate ships. He was so famous that he was known as the first Arab seaman. He was born at Julfar in northern Ras al-Khaimah in present Oman, and probably died at 1500. He became famous in the West as the navigator who has been associated with helping Vasco da Gama find his way from Africa to India . He was the author of nearly 40 works of poetry and prose.


Works

His most important work was Kitab al-Fawa’id fi Usul ‘Ilm al-Bahr wa ’l-Qawa’id (Book of Useful Information on the Principles and Rules of Navigation), written in 1490. It is a navigation encyclopedia, describing the history and basic principles of navigation, lunar mansions, rhumb lines, the difference between coastal and open-sea sailing, the locations of ports from East Africa to Indonesia, star positions, accounts of the monsoon and other seasonal winds, typhoons and other topics for professional navigators. He drew from his own experience and that of his father, also a famous navigator, and the lore of generations of Indian Ocean sailors. More…

Filed in Famous Scientists, Foreign Scientists, Marine Scientists, Moslem Scientists, Scientists | Tagged , , | Comments (0) »

Ahmad ibn Fadlan - Geographics Scientist

11-Sep-07

Ahmad ibn Fadlān ibn al-Abbās ibn Rašīd ibn Hammād (أحمد إبن فضلان إبن ألعباس إبن رشيد إبن حماد) was a 10th century Muslim writer and traveler who wrote an account of his travels as a member of an embassy of the Abbasid Caliph of Baghdad to the king of the Volga Bulgars, the Kitāb ilā Malik al-Saqāliba كتاب إلى ملك الصقالبة.

Manuscript tradition

For a long time, only an incomplete version of the account was known, as transmitted in the geographical dictionary of Yāqūt (under the headings Atil, Bashgird, Bulghār, Khazar, Khwārizm, Rūs), published in 1823 by Fraehn. Only in 1923 was a manuscript discovered by the Turkish scholar of Bashkir origin Zeki Validi Togan in the library of the Iranian city of Mashhad. The manuscript MS 5229 dates from the 13th century (7th cent. Hijra) and consists of 420 pages (210 folia). Besides other geographical treatises, it contains a fuller version of Ibn Fadlan’s text (pp. 390-420). Additional passages not preserved in MS 5229 are quoted in the work of the 16th century Persian geographer Amin Razi called Haft Iqlīm “Seven Climes”. More…

Filed in Foreign Scientists, Geographics Scientists, Moslem Scientists, Scientists | Tagged , , | Comments (0) »

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 Córdoba, 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, More…

Filed in Astronomy Scientists, Chemistry Scientists, Famous Scientists, Foreign Scientists, Mathematics Scientists, Medicine Scientists, Moslem Scientists, Ophthalmology Scientists, Pharmacology Scientists, Physics Scientists, Physiology Scientists, Science Experiments, Scientists | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0) »

Ibn Tufail (Abubacer)

11-Sep-07

Ibn Tufail (c. 1105, Gaudix, Spain – 1185) full name: Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Abd al-Malik ibn Muhammad ibn Tufail al-Qaisi al-Andalusi أبو بكر محمد بن عبد الملك بن محمد بن طفيل القيسي الأندلسي (Latinised form: Abubacer). Andalusian Arab Muslim philosopher, physician, and court official.

Life

Born in Guadix near Granada, he was educated by Ibn Bajjah (Avempace). He served as a secretary for the ruler of Granada, and later as vizier and physician for Abu Yaqub Yusuf, the Almohad ruler of Al-Andalus, to whom he recommended Averroës as his own successor when he retired in 1182. He died in Morocco.

Ibn Tufail was the author of Ḥayy bin Yaqẓān, حي بن يقظان (”Alive son of Awake”): a philosophical romance and allegorical tale of a man who lives alone on an island and who, without contact with other human beings, discovers ultimate truth through a systematic process of reasoned inquiry. Hayy ultimately comes into contact with civilization and religion when he meets Absal. He determines that the trappings of religion, namely imagery and dependence on material goods, are necessary for the multitude in order that they might have decent lives. However, imagery and material goods are distractions from the truth and ought to be abandoned by those whose reason recognizes that they are distractions. More…

Filed in Foreign Scientists, Medicine Scientists, Moslem Scientists, Physics Scientists, Physiology Scientists, Scientists | Tagged , | Comments (0) »

Ibn Sina (Avicenna) - The Father of Modern Medicine

10-Sep-07

ibn sina the father of modern medicineAbū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Sīnā (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 Sīnā 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 Sīnā 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.

More…

Filed in Astronomy Scientists, Chemistry Scientists, Famous Scientists, Mathematics Scientists, Medicine Scientists, Moslem Scientists, Pharmacology Scientists, Physics Scientists, Physiology Scientists, Psychology Scientists | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0) »

Ibn al-Shatir - Astronomy Scientist

10-Sep-07

Ibn al-Shatir (1304 – 1375) (Arabic: ابن الشاطر) was an Arab Muslim astronomer. He worked as muwaqqit (موقت, religious timekeeper) in the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus and constructed a magnificent sundial for its minaret.

His most important astronomical treatise was the Kitab nihayat al-sul fi tashih al-usul (The Final Quest Concerning the Rectification of Principles), in which he drastically reformed the Ptolemaic models of the Sun, Moon, and planets, while eliminating the eccentrics and equant by introducing extra epicycles.

Although his system was firmly geocentric, he had eliminated the Ptolemaic equant and eccentrics, and the mathematical details of his system were identical to those in Nicholaus Copernicus’s De revolutionibus. It is thus believed that Ibn al-Shatir’s model was adapted by Copernicus into a heliocentric model. Though this remains uncertain, it is known that Byzantine Greek manuscripts containing the Tusi-couple which Ibn al-Shatir employed had reached Italy in the 15th century.

Ibn al-Shatir's model for the appearances of Mercury, showing the multiplication of epicycles in a Ptolemaic enterprise
Ibn al-Shatir’s model for the appearances of Mercury, showing the multiplication of epicycles in a Ptolemaic enterprise

Y. M. Faruqi writes:

“Ibn al-Shatir’s theory of lunar motion was very similar to that attributed to Copernicus some 150 years later”.

“Whereas Ibn al-Shatir’s concept of planetary motion was conceived in order to play an important role in an earth-centred planetary model, Copernicus used the same concept of motion to present his sun-centred planetary model. Thus the development of alternative models took place that permitted an empirical testing of the models.”

en.wikipedia.org

Filed in Astronomy Scientists, Foreign Scientists, Moslem Scientists | Tagged , , | Comments (0) »

Abu Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni - The Father of Indology

10-Sep-07

al-biruni moslem scientistAbū Rayḥān Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Bīrūnī (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 Abū Alī ibn Sīnā (Avicenna), More…

Filed in Anthropology Scientists, Astrology Scientists, Astronomy Scientists, Famous Scientists, Geodesy Scientists, Geographics Scientists, Historiography Scientist, Mathematics Scientists, Moslem Scientists, Pharmacology Scientists, Physics Scientists, Physiology Scientists, Psychology Scientists | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0) »

Ibn al-Haytham, The First Scientist

27-Aug-07

ibn al-haythamAbū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan ibn al-Ḥasan ibn al-Haytham (Arabic: أبو علي الحسن بن الحسن بن الهيثم, Latinized: Alhacen or (deprecated) Alhazen) (965 – 1039), was a Muslim polymath who made significant contributions to the principles of optics, as well as anatomy, astronomy, engineering, mathematics, medicine, ophthalmology, philosophy, physics, psychology, visual perception, and science in general with his pioneering development of the scientific method. He is sometimes called al-Basri (Arabic: البصري), after his birthplace in the city of Basra in Iraq (Mesopotamia), then ruled by the Buyid dynasty of Persia. His ethnic background is unclear; some scholars consider him Arab, and some consider him Persian. He was a supporter of the Ash’ari school of Islamic theology.

Ibn al-Haytham is regarded as the father of optics, for his influential Book of Optics, which correctly explained and proved the modern intromission theory of vision, and for his experiments on optics, including experiments on lenses, mirrors, refraction, reflection, and the dispersion of light into its constituent colours. He also explained binocular vision and the moon illusion, speculated on the finite speed, rectilinear propagation and electromagnetic aspects of light, and argued that rays of light are streams of energy particles travelling in straight lines. Due to his quantitative, empirical and experimental approach to physics and science, he is considered the pioneer of the modern scientific method and experimental physics, and some have described him as the “first scientist” for this reason. He is also considered by some to be the founder of psychophysics and experimental psychology, for his experimental approach to the psychology of visual perception, and a pioneer of the philosophical field of phenomenology. His Book of Optics has been ranked alongside Isaac Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica as one of the most influential books ever written in the history of physics. More…

Filed in Astronomy Scientists, Famous Scientists, Foreign Scientists, Mathematics Scientists, Moslem Scientists, Ophthalmology Scientists, Physics Scientists, Psychology Scientists, Scientists | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (0) »