Ibn-al-Haitham, leap to Modern Science

Picture not available of the most erudite muslim scholars, known to modern world as, Ibn al-Haitham, Alhazen, and Abu Ali Hasan Ibn-al-Haisam, represents a leap forward to the age of modern science. At a time, when clouds of ignorance doomed the European middle ages, his works in the fields of optics and scientific methods, enlightened the Arab world. Ibn-al-Haitham or Haisam is considered the father of modern optics.

He was born in 965 C.E. in Basrah, and educated in Basrah and Baghdad. Later, he went to Egypt, where the caliph assigned him to finding a way to stop the floods on Nile; unsuccessful in this, he feigned madness until the death of Caliph al-Hakim. Afterwards, while in Spain, he studied optics, mathematics, physics, medicine and development of scientific methods on each of which he has left several outstanding books.