Ḥasan Ibn al-Haytham, Latinized as Alhazen[10] (/ælˈhæzən/;[11] full name Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan ibn al-Ḥasan ibn al-Haytham أبو علي، الحسن بن الحسن بن الهيثم; c. 965 – c. 1040), was an Arab mathematician, astronomer, and physicist of the Islamic Golden Age.[12][13][14][15][16] Referred to as “the father of modern optics”,[17][18] he made significant contributions to the principles of optics and visual perception in particular. His most influential work is titled Kitāb al-Manāẓir (Arabic: كتاب المناظر, “Book of Optics”), written during 1011–1021, which survived in a Latin edition.[19] A polymath, he also wrote on philosophy, theology and medicine.[20]
Ibn al-Haytham was the first to explain that vision occurs when light reflects from an object and then passes to one’s eyes.[21] He was also the first to demonstrate that vision occurs in the brain, rather than in the eyes.[22] Ibn al-Haytham was an early proponent of the concept that a hypothesis must be supported by experiments based on confirmable procedures or mathematical evidence—an early pioneer in the scientific method five centuries before Renaissance scientists.[23][24][25][26] On account of this, he is sometimes described as the world’s “first true scientist”.[18]
Born in Basra, he spent most of his productive period in the Fatimid capital of Cairo and earned his living authoring various treatises and tutoring members of the nobilities.[27] Ibn al-Haytham is sometimes given the byname al-Baṣrī after his birthplace,[28] or al-Miṣrī (“the Egyptian”).[29][30] Al-Haytham was dubbed the “Second Ptolemy” by Abu’l-Hasan Bayhaqi[31] and “The Physicist” by John Peckham.[32] Ibn al-Haytham paved the way for the modern science of physical optics.[33]
