Avicenna

Ibn Sina (full name Abū ‘Alī al-Husayn ibn ‘Abd Allāh ibn Sīnā al-Balkhī; Persian: ابوعلى سينا/پورسينا), also known as Avicenna) was a Persian Muslim polymath: a physician, astronomer, alchemist, chemist, logician, mathematician, metaphysician, philosopher, physicist, poet, scientist, theologian, statesman, and soldier. Avicenna was born around 980 (370 AH) in Afshana near Bukhara in Khorasan (now part of Uzbekistan), and died in 1037 (428 AH) in Hamadan (now in Iran).

He authored some 450 books on a wide range of subjects, many of which concentrated on philosophy and medicine. His most famous works are The Book of Healing and The Canon of Medicine, which was for almost five centuries a standard medical text at many Islamic and European universities. Avicenna developed a medical system that combined his own personal experience with that of Islamic medicine, the medical system of Galen, Aristotelian metaphysics, and ancient Persian and Arabian medicine. Avicenna is regarded as the father of modern medicine, particularly for his introduction of systematic experimentation and quantification into the study of physiology, and for his discovery of contagious diseases. He is also considered the father of the fundamental concept of momentum in physics.

"One of the most famous exponents of Muslim universalism and an eminent figure in Islamic learning was Ibn Sina, known in the West as Avicenna (981-1037). For a thousand years he has retained his original renown as one of the greatest thinkers and medical scholars in history. His most important medical works are the Qanun (Canon) and a treatise on Cardiac drugs. The 'Qanun fi-l-Tibb' is an immense encyclopedia of medicine. It contains some of the most illuminating thoughts pertaining to distinction of mediastinitis from pleurisy; contagious nature of phthisis; distribution of diseases by water and soil; careful description of skin troubles; of sexual diseases and perversions; of nervous ailments."