Seyyed Hossein Nasr is a Persian Islamic scholar and traditionalist philosopher. After receiving his primary school education in Iran, he was sent to the United States at the age of twelve and graduated from the Peddie School in New Jersey in 1950. He studied physics and mathematics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and received his doctorate from Harvard University in 1958 with specialization in Islamic cosmology and science. From 1958 until 1979, Nasr was professor of the history of science and philosophy at Tehran University where he became dean of the Faculty of Letters for some years. He also served as president of Aryamehr University in Iran. It was during these years in Iran that Nasr studied with such traditional philosophers as S. M. Kazim ʿAssar and S. M. Hossein Tabatabaʾi.

After the Iranian Revolution of 1979, Nasr migrated to the United States and taught...