Ibn al-Haytham

1. Arab mathematician who wrote almost 100 works on mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, and medicine, but who is best known for his book on optics, which became very influential in Europe after it was translated in the 13th century. It contained a detailed description of the eye and disproved the older Greek idea that vision is the result of the eye sending out rays to the object being looked at.

Example Sentences

A similar point may be made about the work of Ibn al-Haytham.

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Scientists investigating the hydrology of the Nile are likely to have heard the story of their tenth-century predecessor, mathematician and physicist Ibn al-Haytham.

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Al-Hasan Ibn al-Haytham transformed the study of light and optics.

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Dr. Kudair al-Tai, head of the technical department at Ibn al-Haytham Hospital, the country’s main eye hospital, is one of those waging the campaign.

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Ibn al-Haytham was much more widely discussed in the Latin West than the Muslim East, but even in the West he was treated as a text, not as a handbook of experimental practice.

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