980-1037

Ibn Sina, known in the West as Avicenna, was the medieval Islamic world's most important philosopher-scientist. His unique codification of traditional learning into an Aristotelian framework exerted a strong influence on scholasticism in the West. His al-Qanun fi al-Tibb (Canon of medicine) remained the standard medical text until the seventeenth century, while his Kitab al-Shifa (Book of healing) synthesized logic, physics, mathematics, and metaphysics.

Ibn Sina was born in 980 in Afshana, near Bukhara in central Asia (now Uzbekistan). A child prodigy, he was able to recite the Koran by age 10, and by 16 had sufficiently mastered contemporary medical knowledge so that he was able to practice medicine. He was later a jurist at Korkanj, an administrator at Rayy, and both physician and vizier to the Prince Shams al-Dawlah of Hamadan (1015-22). After Shams al-Dawlah...