Question

Which mathematician, astronomer and physicist is known in the West for his discoveries on light and vision, among other seminal scientific achievements, and as the father of modern optics?

Answer 1

Alhazan (c. 965 – c. 1040 CE)
Abu ?Ali al-?asan ibn al-?asan ibn al-Haytham (known in the West as Alhazan) born in Basra, present-day Iraq, wrote the influential “Kitab Al Manazer” or the Book of Optics, in addition to several significant books and chapters on philosophy, theology physics, mathematics, engineering, astronomy, medicine, psychology, anatomy, visual perception and ophthalmology. He: established the mathematical calculations to prove light travels in a straight line; developed the camera obscura (effectively a pinhole camera); proposed that eyes receive light reflected from objects, rather than emanating light themselves, contradicting contemporary beliefs including that established by Euclid; developed rigorous experimental methods of controlled scientific testing in order to verify theoretical hypotheses and substantiate inductive conjectures, very similar to the modern scientific method and consisted of a repeating cycle of observation, hypothesis, experimentation, and the need for independent verification; combined observations with rational arguments. The Book of Optics, written in Egypt during 1011–1021, has been ranked alongside Isaac Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica as one of the most influential books ever written in physics, and drastically transformed the understanding of light and vision.