Did you know that which
scholar discovered that the Earth moves 600 years ago before Galileo or did you
know that same scholar made investigation regarding the law of gravitation much earlier than Newton? Let’s have a look together
who is this scholar that many Western scholars examined very carefully his
works.
Ebû Reyhan Muhammed Bin Ahmet
El- Bîrûnî (973 – 1051)
Al-Biruni is regarded as one of the greatest scholars
of the mediecal Islamic era and was well versed in physics, mathematics, astronomy,
and natural sciences,
and also distinguished himself as a historian, chronologist and linguist. He was born in 973 in the Khwarezm region which was based in what is
now the area of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan borders and along the
Ceyhun River.
Biruni who was under the
auspices of the Khorezmshah Palace, attracted attention with his intelligence
on his early ages and he began its observation work when
he was 11 years old and measured the
sun’s meridian altitude by dividing a rotating dial to half degree angles when
he was 17.
Biruni has left many permanent
works to the scientific world in different fields of science and well- known as
a mathematician. Biruni was the greatest mathematicians of the century when he
lived and he was the first scientist that proposed the adoption of the radius as
a one unit in trigonometric functions and has added secant, cosecant and
cotangent functions besides the functions such as sine and cosine. These
inventions of him have been discovered and used by the Western World after barely
2 centuries.
The Model shows the Positions of the Moon Drawn by Biruni
He computed density of six
liquid and 23 solids, very close to present value of them. He also left some works
in medical field as well and he made a woman given birth by cesarean section. "Kitabu's Saydane" written
by Biruni about herbs and some drugs, is his latest work and written in 1050.
In this book, written properties of features of 3000 herbs and how they are
used.
One of his major extant astronomical work is the “Mesudî fi'l Heyeti ve'n-Nücum" and this book has reached today although his other works in the field of astronomy are unfortunately lost.
Biruni repeatedly attacks Aristotle's
celestial physics: he argues by simple
experiment that vacuum must exist; he
is "amazed" by the weakness of Aristotle's argument against
elliptical orbits on the basis that they would create vacuum; he attacks the immutability of the
celestial spheres;and so on.
Biruni’s works with a total of 196 have been
translated into various languages in medieval Europe and unfortunately only 27
of them have reached until today.
The main issues to be highlighted should be about Intellectual Property Rights
while examine Biruni’s productivity and scholar identity. Forasmuch, it is unknown on a global scale that many inventions
discovered by him long before his western colleagues.
In fact, the importance of
inventions was not much different in the past. The only difference was there
was a no way to protect them. When reviewing historical identities, we see how these
inventions can be effective enough to change the lives of millions of people.
For this reason, you should take under protect all your such works and
inventions without delay.
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