Ibn Al-Haytham: father of modern optics.

After the fall of the Roman Empire in AD 476, scientific progress in Europe had come to a standstill. This era between fall of Rome and the Renaissance is commonly known as the dark ages. However, from the 8th till 13th century, scientific and cultural knowledge had flourished in the Islamic world. This period, which began soon after the establishment of the Abbasid Khalifate in Baghdad in the later part of the 8th century, is known as the Golden Period of Islam. While Europe was in the dark ages, the Muslim world was experiencing a rapid progress in all aspects of human knowledge and innovation. During this period, countless contributions were made to the fields of science, philosophy, art, literature and sociology by renowned scholars such as IbnKhaldun, Jabir Ibn Hayyan, Al Khwarizmi, Ibn-Sina, Ibn Al-Haitham and many other prominent scholars and inventors. The documentary films producer Howard R. Turner writes in his book Science in Medieval Islam, “Muslim artists and scientists, princes and laborers together made a unique culture that has directly and indirectly influenced societies on every continent.” The Abbasid caliph Harun AlRashid established an academy called “The House of Wisdom” in Baghdad, where scholars used to gather and translate into Arabic scholarly works from Ancient Rome, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, China, India, Persia, North Africa and Byzantine civilizations. Among those renowned scholars of the late Abbasid era, Ibn Al-Haitham (latinized as Alhazen or Alhacen) was one of the most eminent scientist. He was born in Basra in 965 C.E. (354 A.H.) and died in Cairo in 1040 C.E (430 A.H.). He was educated in Basra and Baghdad, and was the first scientist to formulate and test hypotheses with verifiable experiments. He developed what is now known as the scientific method more than 200 years before European scholars learned of it. For this reason, he was called the First Scientist. He is also considered the father of modern optics and was also nicknamed Ptolemy the Second (Ptolemaeus Secundus) in medieval Europe. Ibn Al-Haitham is most famously known for his writings epitomized by influential works such as Book of Optics, Doubts Concerning Ptolemy, The Model of the Motions, Treatise on Light, Scientific method, experimental science and visual perception. His work was certainly influenced by Aristotle, Euclid and Ptolemy and had influenced, among others, Omar Khayyam, Roger Bacon, Alfonso and Johannes Kepler. Professor Robert S. Elliot writes about Ibn AlHaitham in Electromagnetics: “Alhazen was one of the ablest students of optics of all times. His seven-volume treatise published on this subject had strongly influenced western thought, notably that of Roger Bacon and Kepler.” Contribution to physics