Scientists
Ibn al-Haytham
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Ibn al-Haytham was a scholar working in Basra and Cairo whose Book of Optics, written around 1011 to 1021, overturned the ancient idea that vision works by rays sent out from the eye and argued instead that sight results from light entering the eye from external objects. He built his case through controlled experiment and mathematical reasoning rather than appeal to authority, a method historians credit as an early form of the modern experimental scientific method.
Facts
Birth YearSourced to the subject's own accountConventional scholarly estimate, c. 965; no primary source records his exact birth date. FieldSourced to the subject's own accountOptics and the experimental method 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Sources
1. Ibn al-Haytham (Wikipedia)
WikipediaLead sectionQuote, Lead section
Ibn al-Haytham, Latinized as Alhazen (c. 965 – c. 1040), was a mathematician, astronomer, and physicist of the Islamic Golden Age from Iraq.
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