Alfred Kinsey

Widely considered as the most important sex researcher in the history, American biologist Alfred Kinsey wrote two influential books on the nature of human sexuality: “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” and “Sexual Behavior in the Human Female”. Kinsey was also the founder of the Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction (now named after him) at Indiana University.

Born in Hoboken, New Jersey in June 1894, Alfred Kinsey’s father taught engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology. Kinsey graduated from Columbia High School, Hoboken, and his father insisted him to acquire a degree in engineering at Stevens. After two years, Kinsey recognized that engineering was not his passion, so he was transferred to Bowdoin College, Maine to study biology.

Contributions and Achievements:

Kinsey finally got a B.S. in biology and psychology in 1916. After that, he was listed in a doctoral program in zoology at Harvard University, where he got his Sc.D. in 1919. He took a teaching position in the department of zoology at Indiana University where he remained for the remainder of his career.

Kinsey had already become a big name in entomology by the mid-1930s. His research on gall wasps is considered as the pivotal point in the field of entomology. Meanwhile his interest in human sexuality bore fruit when, in 1938, the Indiana University publication, Daily Student, issued an editorial calling for extensive information about and testing for venereal diseases, a serious health problem that had then stormed the nation.

Kinsey requested permission to design a noncredit course on marriage with about hundred enrolled participants, in which several issues pertaining to sexuality were addressed. Soon he gave up his research on gall wasps and concentrated fully on human sexuality. His projects gained funding from the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Research Council in 1942 so established the Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction at Indiana. He conducted interviews from 5,300 males and 5,940 females on which he based his groundbreaking works.

His publication about male sexuality was issued out in 1948 which sold over a half million copies. The female version, one the other hand, was printed five years later, however to a less warm reception.

Later Life and Death:

The research work of Alfred Kinsey almost ended after the release of “Sexual Behavior in the Human Female”. He had allegedly offended thousands of Americans and the U.S. congress exerted pressure on Dean Rusk, the incharge of the Rockefeller Foundation, to unilaterally terminate the financial support of the institute.

After failing to raise funding from other means, Kinsey unfortunately gave up his extraordinary efforts that revolutionized sexuality research. The institute, however, survived and is still functioning as an independent organization under Indiana University.

Alfred Kinsey died on August 25, 1956 of a heart ailment and pneumonia. He was 62 years old.

Alfred Binet

Alfred Binet was a French psychologist who invented the first practical intelligence test, the Binet-Simon scale. His principal goal was to identify students who needed special help in coping with the school curriculum

Alfred Binet, one of the most influential French psychologists and scientists, is known for his extensive research related to the mental capacity of humans. He literally revolutionized the fields of education and psychology, especially in regard to intelligence testing. Binet’s findings were way ahead of his time, and although he did not quite realise the true worth of his contributions, his name is cemented in the world of psychology.

Born in July 1857, in Nice, France to a physician father and artist mother, Binet’s parents got divorced when he was quite young. He was mostly raised by his mother. At 15, he received several awards for his extraordinary skills in literary composition and translation at the prestigious Louis-le-Grand school. Binet took law and medicine as his favorite subjects. He acquired a degree in law but chosen not to pursue a career in any of these subjects.

While in his mid-twenties, Binet was given permission as a reader at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. There, he studied about the developments and trends in psychology. He was inspired by the works of Theodule Ribot and John Stuart Mill, and that boosted his enthusiasm for sensory and associationistic psychology.

Contributions and Achievements:

Binet met Jean-Martin Charcot at the Salpêtrière Hospital in the early 1880s. He extensively studied, researched and published his works on hypnosis and hysteria. While asserting a controversial theory, he gradually comprehended the nature of suggestibility on psychological experimentation.

In 1884 he got married to Laure Balbiani, the daughter of the famous embryologist Edouard-Gérard Balbiani. They had two daughters together, Madeleine and Alice. Binet gave up his position at the Salpêtrière in 1890. He carried out home experiments with his daughters and observed their behavior and responses in a systematic approach. Subsequently, he published his work explaining these experiments that dealt with individual differences and measuring intelligence. His daughter’s ability to differentiate the relative size of collections premised conservation studies by Jean Piaget.

Binet volunteered at the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, Sorbonne, where he was made a director in 1894. He worked with Henry Heaunis and Theodore Simon to lay down the psychology journal “L’Année psychologique”. The journal is widely considered to be one of the most important contributions in the history of psychology.

The approaches of Binet’s experimental research also addressed schoolchildren. French physical chemist Victor Henri briefly helped him with the investigations of visual memory and research regarding individual psychology. He advocated that the intelligence of a person, and the individual differences in intelligence of more than one persons, could well be measured. He became a member of the Free Society for the Psychological Study of the Child. Binet also performed his services to a Commission on the Education of Retarded Children for the French government. The landmark development of mothods related to the intelligence quotient (IQ) tests also took place during this time. In an effort to find out the inadequacies that influence mental subnormality, Binet and Simon devised an instrument.

The research emphasis of Alfred Binet on the variable intelligence of children offered a fundamental model for measuring and understanding the individual differences of both typically and atypically developing children.

Later Life and Death:

Alfred Binet also studied human sexual behavior (he coined the term “erotic fetishism”) and the palm reading abilities of the famous Paris chiromancer Valentine Dencausse. He died on October 18, 1911.

Alexander Graham Bell

Alexander Graham Bell

Only few people in this world leave their footprints on the sands of history, and these men of honor never die. One such grand personality is the greatest innovator of all times Mr. Alexander Graham Bell, who invented the first practical telephone. His other major inventions include: optical communications, hydrofoils, metal detector and aeronautic.

Graham bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on March 3, 1847. He was the only child, of Professor Alexander Melville Bell, out of the three, who didn’t die due to tuberculosis at a young age. He received his early education at home from his father; however he then got admitted to Royal high School, Edinburgh, which he left at the age of 15, due to poor performance.

Bell moved to London to live with his grand father and enrolled at the Western House Academy, Scotland. For further studies he joined University of Edinburgh. His first invention came at the age of 12, when he built a homemade de-husking machine to be used at his neighbor’s mill. In return, he was given a small workshop within the mill which he used to carry out further experiments.
At the age of 23, Bell’s brother’s widow and his parents shifted to Canada, to stay with a family friend. After a short stay there, they purchased a farm near Brantford, where Bell built his own workshop in the carriage house. After setting up his workshop, Bell continued his experiments with electricity and sound based on the work of Helmholtz.

Telephone
By 1874, telegraph message traffic was rapidly expanding; there was a great need to find an inexpensive way to send multiple telegraph messages on each telegraph line.
At that time, Bell had made great progress at both his Boston laboratory as well as at his family home in Canada and his work on harmonic telegraph entered a decisive stage. Bell got financial support from two wealthy patrons but he did not have the basic knowledge to continue with the experiment. He still he did not give up and kept trying.
Bell hired Thomas A. Watson, an experienced electrical designer, as his assistant. In 1875, an accident during the experiment led to the sound powered telephone, which was able to transmit voice like sounds. At last, after the patent issue made by Elisha Gray on March 10, 1876, Bell succeeded in making his telephone work.
The Bell Telephone Company was created in 1877. Bell company engineers brought about numerous improvements to the telephone making it the most successful product ever.
Bell further carried out his experiments in communication. He came up with the photophone-transmission of sound on a beam of light, which was a precursor of fiber-optics. He helped the deaf to learn new speech techniques. Altogether he received 18 patents in his name out of which he shared 12 with his collegues.
Final years:

On August 2, 1922 Bell died of diabetes at Beinn Bhreagh, Nova Scotia, at age 75, leaving behind a wife and two daughters. He was buried at the Beinn Bhreagh Mountain.
During his funeral every phone in North America was silenced in honor of the great inventor.

Alexander Fleming

Alexander Fleming

Scottish biologist and inventor Alexander Firming is widely regarded for his 1928 discovery of penicillin, a drug that is used to kill harmful bacteria. His work on immunology, bacteriology, and chemotherapy is considered groundbreaking and highly influential.

Born in Ayrshire, Scotland on August 6, 1881 to Hugh Fleming and Grace Stirling Morton, Alexander Fleming was the third of the four children. He attended medical school in London, England and graduated in 1906. Fleming assisted in battlefield hospitals in France during World War I (1911-1918), where he observed that some soldiers, despite surviving their initial battlefield wounds, were dying of septicemia or some another infection only after a few years.

Contributions and Achievements:

Once the war was over, Fleming looked for medicines that would heal infections. The antiseptics of World War I were not totally efficient, and they primarily worked on a wound’s surface. Spraying an antiseptic made things even worse if the wound was deep.

Fleming came back to his laboratory in 1928 after a long vacation. He carried out an experiment and left several dishes with several bacteria cultures growing in them. After some time, he observed that some of the dishes were contaminated with a fungus, which ruined his experiment. He was about to discard the dishes, but he noticed that in one dish, the bacteria failed to grow in an area around the fungus.

He successfully isolated the fungus and established it was from the Penicillium group or genus. Fleming made his discovery public in 1929, however to a mixed reaction. While a few doctors thought penicillin, the antibiotic obtained from the Penicillium fungus, might have some importance as a topical antiseptic, the others were skeptical. Fleming was sure that the penicillin could also function inside the body. He performed some experiments to demonstrate that the genus of fungus had germ-killing power, even when it was diluted 800 times. Fleming tried to cultivate penicillin until 1940, but it was hard to grow, and isolating the germ-killing agent was even harder. He was unsure if it would ever work in a proper manner.

Luckily, a German Chemist, Ernst Chain, discovered the process to isolate and concentrate the germ-killing agent in penicillin some time later. Another Australian pharmacologist Howard Florey found out the ways of its mass production. During World War I, the goverments of U.S. and Great Britain funded Florey and Chain, therefore the penicillin almost became the magic spell that cured many diseases. Florey and Chain were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1945.

Personal Life and Death:

Fleming married his first wife, Sarah, who died in 1949. Their only child, Robert Fleming, went on to become a general medical practitioner. Fleming married for the second time to Dr. Amalia Koutsouri-Vourekas, with whom he worked at St. Mary’s, on 9 April 1953. She also died in 1986.

Fleming died of a heart failure in London in 1955.

Alexander Brongniart

Alexandre Brongniart was a French chemist, mineralogist, and zoologist, who collaborated with Georges Cuvier on a study of the geology of the region around Paris. 

Born: February 5, 1770, Paris, France

Died: October 7, 1847

Parents: Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart

Children: Adolphe-Théodore Brongniart

Alexandre Brongniart, French mineralogist, geologist, and naturalist, who first arranged the geologic formations of the Tertiary Period (66.4 to 1.6 million years ago) in chronological order and described them. (The Tertiary Period was later replaced with the Paleogene and Neogene periods; together they span the interval between 65.5 and 2.6 million years ago.)

Brongniart was appointed professor of natural history at the École Centrale des Quatre-Nations, Paris, in 1797, and in 1800 he was made director of the Sèvres Porcelain Factory, a post he retained until his death. He worked to improve the art of enameling in France and made Sèvres the leading such factory in Europe.

Among Brongniart’s early papers is the “Essai d’une classification naturelle des reptiles” (1800; “Essay on the Natural Classification of Reptiles”), in which he divided the class Reptilia into four orders: Batrachia 

Alessandro Volta

Alejandro Volta

Alejandro Volta is one of the most famous Italian physicists who is highly regarded for his invention of the electric cell as well as the 1777 discovery of methane.

Volta was raised in a strict Catholic family. He got his early education from a Jesuit school. He was adored by his teachers who thought Volta had all the abilities to become a good Jesuit priest.

Volta was very keen about studying electricity which was in its earliest stages at the time. He envisioned that there is a net neutral condition in a body in which all electrical attractions are neutralized. This effect could be transformed by some external source which later changes the relative configuration of the particles. Volta believed that in such an electrically unstable state, the body gets electrically charged.

With this rather weak concept of an electrically charged body, Volta experimented extensively to study electrical induction. He was successful in creating some devices that were able to store electric charge. Subsequently, he gained fame and received grants to visit other countries. He also saw other famous scientists around this time. Volta accepted a teaching job at the University of Pavia where he stayed for about forty years.

Influenced by the efforts of Dc Saussure, Volta developed an interest in atmospheric electricity. He made certain modifications to the electrical instruments made by the Swiss geologist, making them more refined and precise. He came up with methods to measure the so-called “electrical tension”, later named as the volt.

Volta modified another instrument called the audiometer, which measured the volume and composition of gases. He was successful in finding out that ordinary air contains about 21% of oxygen. The modified version of the instrument also helped Lavoisier on his legendary work regarding the composition of water. Volta found out that the inflammable gas which creates bubbles in marshes was methane, which is now used as a fuel.

Volta initially rejected the Galvani’s idea of animal electricity. When he carried out the experiment himself, he was amazed that the same effect, momentary electric current, which was discovered by Galvani, can be achieved using metals and not dead frogs. Volta made it clear that electric currents could be generated by appropriately connecting metals or wires. Using zinc and copper wires and saline solutions, Volta successfully construced the first electric battery, widely considered to be one of the greatest and most important breakthroughs in the history of science and mankind.

Later Life and Death:

Alessandro Volta retired in 1819 to his estate in Camnago, Lombardy, Italy (now called “Camnago Volta”). He died on March 5, 1827 at the age of 82.

Albrecht von Haller

One of the greatest and most influential biologists of the 18th century, Swiss scientst Albrecht von Haller is often credited as the “father of experimental physiology”. His contributions ranged across anatomy, physiology, embryology, botany and poetry.

Early Life and Career:

Born in Bern, Switzerland, in 1708, Albrecht von Haller, as a child prodigy, wrote several metrical translations from Ovid, Horace and Virgil when he was hardly fifteen. He studied the form and function of one organ after the other, launching anatomy as an experimental science, and also enforcing dynamic rules to the study of physiology.

Haller analyzed the irritability of muscle and the sensibility of nerves, studying circulation time and the automatic action of the heart. He gave the first to give detailed explanation of respiration.

His publicaton “Elementa Physialogiae Carports Hamani” (Elements of Physiology, 1757-66) proved to be one of the influential works on the subject. Haller consistently broadened the field of anatomy, relating it to physiology by experimentation, and implemented dynamic rules to complex physiological problems.

The approach of Albrecht von Haller was precise, analytical and objective. He was the first person to discover that only nerves produce sensation and only those parts of the body connected to the nervous system can undergo a sensation. Probably his most notable contribution was the formulation of the method of physiological research.

Later Life and Death:

Albrecht von Haller’s health began substantially declining after 1773. He died on December 12, 1777. He was 69 years old.

Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein was born in Germany. He was a great physicist from America and a Nobel laureate. Einstein gained worldwide fame as he created extraordinary theories related to relativity and for his suggestions and premises that are related to the light’s particle nature. Einstein is one of the most renowned physicists of the twentieth century.

Einstein was born on 14th March, 1879 in Ulm, Germany. He spent his teenage years in Munich with his family. He and his family had an electronic equipment store. Einstein was not talkative in his childhood, and till the age of three, he didn’t talk much. But as a teenager, he had great interest in nature and had aptitude to comprehend tricky and complicated theories of arithmetic. Einstein knew geometry when he was 12 years old.

University of Zurich awar

Einstein loved to be creative and innovative, therefore he loathed the boring and noncreative spirit in his school at Munich. Einstein left his school at the age of 15, as his family left Germany due to constant failure in their business. His family went to Milan and Einstein spent a year with them. It was then that he decided that, in order to survive, he has to create his own way out. He studied his secondary school from Switzerland and then joined Swiss National Polytechnic which was located in Zurich. Einstein didn’t like the teaching method there, so he bunked classes to study physics or play his violin. With the help of his classmate’s notes, he cleared his exams, and in 1900, he graduated. Einstein was not considered a good student by his teachers.

Einstein accepted the job of a professor and worked as an alternate teacher for about two years. He achieved the post of an examiner in the year 1902 in Bern at the office of Swiss patent. Einstein wedded his class mate Mileva Maric in 1903. He had two sons with her but they later divorced. After some years Einstein married someone else.

Einstein’s second publication discussed photoelectric effect. This paper comprised of innovative premises related to the light’s nature. Einstein gave the idea that light under some conditions contains some particles and the energy that a light particle contains is termed as photon. This photon and the radiation’s frequency are directly related. Its formula is E=hu where E is defined as the radiation’s energy and h is a constant defined as Planck’s constant and u is defined as radiation’s frequency. Einstein’s idea was rejected by everyone because it was against the conventional idea which stated that transfer of light energy is an ongoing process.

Robert Andrews, who was an American physicist, was surprised when Einstein’s theory was experimentally proven by him a decade later. Main focus of Einstein was to comprehend the nature of radiations that are electromagnetic. This led to the birth of a theory that will be a mix of light’s particle and wave nature. This theory too was comprehended by few scientists.

Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity

In 1905, Einstein’s third paper was published. It was based on dynamics of bodies in motion which later was called as the theory of relativity. The nature of radiation and matter and their interaction was the theme of discussion since the era of Newton. The view that laws of mechanics are essential is defined as the mechanical view of world, and the view that laws of electric are essential is defined as electromagnetic view of world. None of the view has been successful in giving a reliable elucidation for the interaction between matter and radiation, that is, the relation between radiation and matter is seen concurrently by the viewer at rest and a viewer travelling at consistent speed.

After observing these problems for a decade, Einstein came to the conclusion that the main problem was in the theory of measurement, and not in the theory related to matter. The main crux of Einstein’s special theory of relativity was the comprehension of the fact that all the dimensions of space and time are dependent on judgments that whether two events those are far off occur together. This hypothesis led Einstein towards the development of a theory which was based on two basic hypotheses: one that laws of physics are identical in all inertial positions. This is called as the principle of relativity. Second postulate is called as the principle of variance, according to this principle; the light’s speed is worldwide stable in a vacuum. Hence, Einstein was capable of providing reliable and accurate explanation of physical actions and measures in varying inertial positions without assuming about the matter or radiation’s nature, or their interaction. Practically, Einstein’s argument was not understood by any one.

Most of time to focus on his theory more. The last attempt of Einstein which was the theory related to the unified field was not completely successful, was an effort to comprehend the physical connections that included all weak, strong and electromagnetic interactions. This was all an adjustment of the geometry of space and time.

It was felt by most of Einstein’s classmates that these attempts were wrong. During 1915 and 1930 a new concept was in progress in the field of physics related to the basic trait of matter, also known as the quantum theory. According to this theory light has a dual character; it has the characteristics of both particle and wave, which Einstein previously considered compulsory. Also the uncertainty principle which says that accuracy in the process of measurement is restricted. In addition to this, it consisted of a new denial, at the basic level, of the idea of exact measurement. However, Einstein was not in favor of such ideas and he remained an opponent of these notions till his death.

World Citizen

Einstein became famous worldwide after 1919. He got many awards and prizes. In 1921, different scientific societies throughout the world awarded Einstein the Nobel Prize in physics. Wherever he travelled globally, that became an event. He was always followed by media. Einstein used media to add his views on society and politics.

Einstein supported pacifism and Zionism movement. While the World War I was taking place Einstein was one of the academics of Germany that criticized Germany’s participation in the war openly. He was attacked many times by Germans because of his continuous support toward Zionists and pacifist’s goals. Einstein’s theories including the relativity theory was criticized publically.

Einstein left Germany and went to United States when Hitler gained power. He got a place in New Jersey at the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton. On behalf of Zionism world Einstein continued his efforts. Einstein had to abandon pacifist because of the danger face by mankind put forward by the Nazi rule in Germany.

Einstein worked together with many other scientists in 1939 and wrote a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, giving the option of making an atomic bomb and the possibility that the government of Germany was planning such route. As the letter was signed only by Einstein, helped in building the atomic bomb although Einstein had no participation in the whole work process and he was unaware about it.

Einstein participated actively in the international disarmament cause after the war. Einstein maintained his support with Zionism but he rejected the offer to become the president of Israel. In late 1940’s in US Einstein emphasized on the importance of making sacrifices to safeguard the freedom of politics. Einstein left this world on 18th April, 1955 in Princeton.

Some of Einstein’s efforts have been considered impractical. Einstein’s proposals had been very well managed and nicely planned and just like his theories that seemed motivated by the intuition of sound which comprised of wise and cautious observational assessment. Einstein was interested in politics and social issues too but it was science that really caught his interest and he believed that it was only the universe’s nature that mattered in the end. Relativity was found in his writings. He wrote, The Special and General Theory , About Zionism, Builders of the Universe, Why War?, The World as I See It, The Evolution of Physics and Out of My Later Years in the years 1916, 1931, 1932, 1933, 1934, 1938 and 1950 respectively. In the year 1987, Einstein’s papers had begun to get published in multiple volumes.

Albert Abraham Michelson

The nineteenth century physicist, Albert Abraham Michelson, was the first American to be awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics. He became famous for his establishment of the speed of light as a fundamental constant and other spectroscopic and metrological investigations. He had a memorable career that included teaching and research positions at the Naval Academy, the Case School of Applied Science, Clark University, and the University of Chicago.

Born to a Jewish family on December 19, 1852 Strzelno, Provinz Posen in the Kingdom of Prussia, Michelson was brought to America when he was only two years old. He was brought up in the rough mining towns of Murphy’s Camp, California and Virginia City, Nevada, where his father was a trader. He completed his high school education in San Francisco and later in 1869 he went to Annapolis as an appointee of President U.S. Grant.

During his four years at the Naval Academy, Michelson did extremely well in optics, heat and climatology as well as drawing. He graduated in 1873. Two years later, he was appointed an instructor in physics and chemistry. After resigning from the post in 1880, he spent two years studying in Universities of Berlin and Heidelberg, and the Collège de France and École Polytechnique in Paris. He developed a great interest in science and the problem of measuring the speed of light in particular.

He was then employed as a professor of physics at the Case School of Applied Science at Cleveland, Ohio. Later in 1889 he moved to Clark University as professor of physics, and after three years he was invited to head the department of physics at the new University of Chicago, a position which he held until 1931.

In 1899, he married Edna Stanton and they had one son and three daughters.

During his stay at Annapolis, he carried out his first experiments on the speed of light. With his simple device, made up essentially of two plane mirrors, one fixed and one revolving at the rate of about 130 turns per second from which light was to be reflected, Michelson was successful in obtaining a measure closer than any that had been obtained to the presently accepted figure — 186,508 miles per second.

Michelson executed his most successful experiment at Cleveland in cooperation with the chemist Edward W. Morley. Light waves were considered as ripples of the aether which occupied all space. If a light source were moving through the aether, the pace of the light would be different for each direction in which it was discharged. In the Michelson-Morley experiment two beams of light, passed out and reflected back at right angles to each other, took equal amount of time. Thus the concept of stationary ether had to be discarded.

Michelson is also known for the measurement of the diameter of super-giant star, Betelgeuse, using astronomical interferometer with his colleague Francis G. Pease.

In 1907, Michelson was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics “for his optical precision instruments and the spectroscopic and metrological investigations carried out with their aid”. During the same year he also won the Copley Medal, the Henry Draper Medal in 1916, and the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1923. Moreover, a crater on the Moon is also named after him.

Death:

Michelson died on May 9, 1931, while he was working on a more refined measurement of the velocity of light in Pasadena, California.

Al-Battani

Al-Battani is sometimes known by a Latinized version of his name, being Albategnius, Albategni or Albatenius. His full name was Abu Abdallah Mohammad ibn Jabir ibn Sinan al-Raqqi al-Harrani al-Sabi al-Battani. Al-Battani’s father was Jabir ibn Sinan al-Harrani who had a high reputation as an instrument maker in Harran. The name makes the identification certain that al-Battani himself was skilled in making astronomical instruments and there is a good indication that he learnt these skills from his father.

Abdallah Muhammad Ibn Jabir Ibn Sinan al-Battani al-Harrani was born around 858 C.E. in Harran. Battani was first educated by his father Jabir Ibn San’an al-Battani, who also was a well-known scientist. He then moved to Raqqa, situated on the bank of the Euphrates, where he received advanced education and later on flourished as a scholar. At the beginning of the 9th century, he migrated to Samarra, where he worked till the end of his life. His family had been members of the Sabian sect, a religious sect of star worshippers from Harran. Being worshipers of the stars meant that the Sabians had a strong motivation for the study of astronomy. Al-Battani, unlike Thabit, another mathematician from his home town, was not a believer in the Sabian religion. His name “Abu Abdallah Mohammad” indicates that he was certainly a Muslim.

Al-Battani made remarkably accurate astronomical observations at Antioch and ar-Raqqah in Syria. The town of ar-Raqqah, where most of al-Battani’s observations were made, became prosperous when Caliph Harun al-Rashid built several palaces there.

The Fihrist describes al-Battani as one of the most famous observers and a leader in geometry, theoretical and practical astronomy, and astrology. He composed work on astronomy, with tables, containing his own observations of the sun and moon and a more accurate description of their motions than that given in Ptolemy’s “Almagest”.

achievements of al-Battani’s are:

• He cataloged 489 stars.

• He refined the existing values for the length of the year, which he gave as 365 days 5 hours 46 minutes 24 seconds, and of the seasons.

• He calculated 54.5″ per year for the precession of the equinoxes and obtained the value of 23° 35′ for the inclination of the ecliptic.

Rather than using geometrical methods, as other scientists had done, al-Battani used trigonometric methods which were an important advancement. Al-Battani showed that the farthest distance of the Sun from the Earth varies and, as a result, annular eclipses of the Sun are possible as well as total eclipses. Al-Battani is important in the development of science for a number of reasons, but one of these must be the large influence his work had on scientists such as Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Galileo and Copernicus.

Death:

Historians all agree that Al-Battani passed away in 317 H. /929 A.D., near the city of Moussul in Iraq. He was regarded as one of the most famous Arab astronomers. He dedicated all his life until his death to the observation of planets and stars.