Wikinventia — Atlas of discoveries and inventions · Middle Age

Theory of vision and experimental optics — Ibn al-Haytham

1021 AD · Transmission: Silenced
PhysicsMethodArab

Ibn al-Haytham publishes the Kitāb al-Manāẓir (c.1011–1021). He demonstrates experimentally that vision is the reception of light, not emission from the eye (refuting Euclid and Ptolemy). First systematic use of the camera obscura with mathematical analysis. Cited by Galileo, Descartes, and Kepler. Considered the founder of the experimental method.

InstitutionCairo — Fatimid Caliphate
Historical regionEgypt (present-day)
Primary sourceIbn al-Haytham — Kitāb al-Manāẓir (c.1021). Medieval Latin translation: De Aspectibus. MS: Süleymaniye Library, Istanbul
Secondary sourceMacTutor, St Andrews — Ibn al-Haytham; Sabra, A.I. (ed./trans.) — The Optics of Ibn al-Haytham (1989, Warburg Institute)
Original languageClassical Arabic
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