Ibn al-Haytham
Name: Alhazen, Ibn al-Haytham [Latinized as
Alhazen or Alhacen]
Full Name: Abu Ali al-Hasan ibn al-Hasan ibn
al-Haytham
Born: July 1, 965 CE [354 AH], Basra, Buyid
Emirate
Died: March 6, 1040 [age 74] [430 AH], Cairo,
Egypt, Fatimid Caliphate
Places of Residence: Basra, Cairo
Ibn al-Haytham was born in the
Iraqi city of Basra during the Abbasid Caliphate. He came about 100 years after
the founding of the House of Wisdom in Baghdad. Undoubtedly, the culture of
learning and advancement that existed in the Muslim world at that time greatly
influenced him from a young age. He studied Islamic sciences and soon became
mayor of the city of Basra. During this time, he continued to study, focusing
on science and other empirical subjects. However, his major breakthrough came
in another part of the Muslim world.
The list of Ibn al-Haytham’s
achievements and contributions goes on and on. What is truly astonishing is
that he wrote more than 200 books, but only about 50 have survived to this day.
We probably do not even know the full extent of what he discovered, which goes
beyond even the amazing works that have survived. Newton directly built on the
ideas of Ibn al-Haytham. Unfortunately, his contributions have been overlooked
since his death.
Beyond Light
In the 1020s and 1030s he wrote
many books on astronomy. He wrote about the errors in the Ptolemaic model of
how stars and planets move and provided a more realistic view of how the
universe works. Though he knew the Earth was a sphere, he still held to the
ancient Greek idea that the Earth was the center of the universe.
He studied how light is affected
when passing through a medium such as water or gases. From this, he was able to
explain why the color of the sky changes at twilight. The Sun’s rays strike the
atmosphere at an angle, causing refraction. From this, he was able to calculate
the depth of Earth’s atmosphere, 1000 years before it was proven by space
flight.
Similarly, he was the first to
study the phenomenon of the pinhole camera. The concept of the pinhole camera
is simple: a small box with a hole on one side is able to project an image of
whatever is outside onto the inside of the box. Those familiar with how modern
cameras work will notice that this is how cameras generally operate, but today
with the addition of a lens. Ibn al-Haytham was able to build these pinhole
cameras hundreds of years before the modern development of photography as we
know it.
The Book of Optics
With his revolutionary
scientific experimental method, Ibn al-Haytham made leaps in the field of
optics. In his book, _The Book of Optics_, he was the first to reject the
ancient Greek idea that light comes out of the eye, bounces off objects, and
returns to the eye. He went deeper into how the eye itself works. Through
dissection and the knowledge of previous scholars, he was able to begin
explaining how light enters the eye, is focused, and is projected onto the back
of the eye.
The Scientific Method
Ibn al-Haytham knew better. He
was the first scientist in history to insist that every new discovery must be
proven through a definite method: the scientific method.
What has been forgotten is that
European scholars stood on the shoulders of Ibn al-Haytham and other Muslim
scientists. Without his ideas on proving scientific principles, we might still
be living in a time when speculation, superstition, and unproven myths form the
basis of science.
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