The Forgotten History of Muslim Scientists [Slide Show]
Without the flourishing of science in Muslim lands in the past, the modern world might not have algorithms or algebra
![The Forgotten History of Muslim Scientists [Slide Show]](https://static.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/2A8FDE9D-098B-4F06-95933DF5B4EAD660.jpg?w=590&h=393)
The Forgotten History of Muslim Scientists [Slide Show]
- Al-Khwarizmi: Considered by some the inventor of algebra, Abu Abdallah Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi was a Persian mathematician working at the House of Wisdom in Baghdad in the ninth century. In fact, the very name of this form of math is derived from the Arabic al-jabr , meaning "restoring," which is how al-Khwarizmi referred to the operation of removing roots and squares from a quadratic equation by adding the same quantity to each side of the equation... Courtesy of John L. Esposito
- Abbas ibn-Firnas: Born in the Al-Andalus region of medieval Muslim Spain in A.D. 810, ibn Firnas may have been the first inventor to attempt flight using a glider, as pictured here. The flight may be apocryphal, however, as its primary historical reference is from a court poem—although it appears in a wide variety of Arabic histories... 1001 Inventions Ltd., 2010
- Alhazen: An Arab or Persian physicist born in A.D. 965 in what is now the port city of Basra in modern-day Iraq, Alhazen pioneered experimental physics and founded the modern scientific understanding of optics—the study of the behavior and properties of light... © Ali Amro / MuslimHeritageImages.com
