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. When he failed to regulate the floods of the River Nile in Egypt, he was placed under house arrest by his employer, the caliph, which allowed him to devote his life to scientific pursuits, such as his magisterial seven-volume Book of Optics that directly influenced Western scientists such as Johannes Kepler and Roger Bacon centuries later. The book also contained his description of the camera obscura—a device for projecting images—as shown in this illustration.
Alhazen is just one of a multitude of scientists working in the Muslim world in centuries past who made significant contributions to the advancement of science. In fact, the golden age of Muslim science lasted nearly a millennium, as depicted in a traveling exhibition, "1001 Inventions," now showing at the New York Hall of Science.
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