Science
973 to 1048, Kath in Khwarazm (present-day Uzbekistan)
Measuring the earth from a mountain, studying India on its own terms, and setting observation above authority - a scientist devoted to precision and honesty.
Start learning Abu →Al-Biruni’s celebrated dip-angle method at the fort of Nandana: with one hill of known height, an astrolabe, and a little trigonometry, a single observer standing in one place computed the radius of the whole eart…
Al-Biruni’s Tahqiq ma li-l-Hind - the book in which he learned Sanskrit, read the Hindu sages in the original, and set out to report their doctrines ‘without prejudice,’ as a simple record of facts. It…
Al-Biruni’s early masterpiece al-Athar al-baqiya - a comparative science of calendars, eras, and festivals across the civilizations, and a manual of how to sift contradictory traditions, weighing eyewitness agains…
Al-Biruni’s scientific temper at full strength: his letters challenging Aristotle’s physics point by point against Ibn Sina, his treatment of the earth’s rotation as a legitimate testable question, and…
Al-Biruni’s al-Qanun al-Mas’udi - the summa of Islamic mathematical astronomy: refined planetary theory and trigonometry, the coordinates of cities, the geodesy of the earth, and the elegant solution of the…
More in Science
Isaac NewtonGalileo GalileiCharles DarwinMarie CurieIbn al HaythamJohannes KeplerNicolaus CopernicusJames Clerk Maxwellepoché — a humanities education that remembers you.