Ibn al-Haytham

Ibn al-Haytham

Ḥasan Ibn al-Haytham (Latinized as Alhazen; ; full name Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan ibn al-Ḥasan ibn al-Haytham أبو علي، الحسن بن الحسن بن الهيثم; c. 965 – c. 1040) was a medieval mathematician, astronomer, and physicist of the Islamic Golden Age from present-day Iraq. Referred to as "the father of modern optics", he made significant contributions to the principles of optics and visual perception in particular. His most influential work is titled Kitāb al-Manāẓir (Arabic: كتاب المناظر, "Book of Optics"), written during 1011–1021, which survived in a Latin edition. The works of Alhazen were frequently cited during the scientific revolution by Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, Christiaan Huygens, and Galileo Galilei. Read more on Wikipedia

His biography is available in different languages on Wikipedia. Ibn al-Haytham is the 31st most popular physicist (down from 30th in 2019), the 7th most popular biography from Iraq (up from 13th in 2019) and the most popular Iraqi Physicist.

Ibn al-Haytham is most famous for his contributions to the field of optics. He is credited with discovering the principle of the pinhole camera, which is still used in photography today. He also contributed to the fields of geometry and trigonometry.