Science: Islam's forgotten geniuses !!


The untold story of Arabic brilliance should be a timely reminder of a proud
heritage, says Jim Al-Khalili
ISLAM'S FORGOTTEN GENIUSES

•* Ibn al-Natis, a Syrian from the late 13th century, is credited with
giving the first correct deion of blood circulation in the body, 400
years before the work of Thomas Harvey.

• The Polish astronomer Copernicus (1473-1543) has Arabic astronomers to
thank for his calculations: indeed, there are diagrams in his books that
appear to have been lifted exactly from the work of the Arab astronomer Ibn
Shatir 100 years earlier.

• The modern scientific method, based on observation and measurement, is
often said to have been established in the 17th century by Francis Bacon and
René Descartes. But the Iraqi-born physicist Ibn al-Haythem (Alhazen), had
the same idea in the 10th century.



The word "alchemy" derives from the Arabic "alkimya", which means
"chemistry". The world's first true chemist was a Yemeni Arab by the name of
Jabir ibn Hayyan, born in 721.

• Al-Razi (Rhazes) was the greatest clinician of the Middle Ages. Born near
Teheran in 865, he ran a psychiatric ward in Baghdad at a time when, in the
Christian world, the mentally ill would have been regarded as being
possessed by the devil.

• The word "algebra" comes from the Arabic "al-jebr", and was made famous by
the great ninth-century mathematician al-Khwarizmi. But contrary to popular
myth, algebra was not an Islamic invention - its rules actually go back to
the Greek mathematician Diophantus.