A Jordanian-born chemist’s Nobel victory reconnects the modern Middle East with its long tradition of discovery. His story is a reminder that curiosity still runs deep in the region’s DNA.
The foundations of modern physics were set by just one Englishman, Sir Isaac Newton, after whose work all physical phenomena known before the 20th century could be quantified. No Muslims assisted him and without his invention of calculus no physics of any value was possible.
"only 15 Nobel laureates have been Muslim out of 1,022, and even then, only 5 of them are in the field of science"
By comparison, 24% of Nobel Prizes in Physics and 19% of Nobel Prizes in Chemistry have gone to Jewish scientists; 6 of the latter while working at universities in Israel
Dear Reader thank you for your valuable input. I agree that towards the end of what we call the "Golden Age of Islam" teaching of al-Ghazhali and others like him sowed seeds whose wheat we still reap in the region. However, the meaningful contributions of the period, while it lasted, cannot be ignored.
Science is a method based on thousands of years of human development and accumulation of knowledge. No one man (or woman) can be credited to have "founded" one field or the other. Calculus is a very good example as you have pointed out.
Archimedes (3rd century BC) explored the ideas of infinity and infinitesimals. Using it to approximate the area of a shape (or curve) by dividing it into infinitely many simpler shapes. During the Golden Age of Islam, Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi invented algebra which, for the first time ever, introduced a system of reduction and balancing to solve equations. René Descartes in 1637 invented the cartesian plane (the X,Y plane) allowing algebra to become alive and present itself as a graph. Newton showed up only after these inventions and discoveries were made in order to invent calculus. A form of math which deals with rates of change, curves and infinities, without the work done by Archimedes, al-Khawarizmi and Descartes, Newton (and Gottfried Leibniz who co-discovered calculus and whose notations we actually use today i.e dy/dx) would never have been able to invent calculus and use it to explain the physical phenomenas of nature such as gravity or motion.
I hope this shines light on the misconception that Muslims, or anyone else before Newton, had little to offer to his work. I suggest reading https://www.stevenstrogatz.com/books/infinite-powers by Prof. Strogatz. He has clearly explained the journey of calculus and how it came into being.
Newton said, with excessive modesty I believe, that he could see far because he stood on the shoulders of giants.
However, before Newton what was called "science" had little predictive ability. With Newton's work it could predict ballistic trajectories and the orbits of all the planets (except Mercury) to such precision that when an inconsistency was found, it was correctly attributed to the gravity of an unknown planet and led to the discovery of Neptune in its predicted orbit.
Science without predictive ability is mere supposition; the test of a scientific theory is that it can predict new phenomena, like the presence of a new planet, the bending of light by gravity or the conversion of mass to energy.
As for algebra, note that mathematical notation like the equal sign, a=b, was not invented until the mid 1500s (in Europe), so the Arab notion of algebra was closer to word games than to equations.
I agree with you fully. My main correction was aimed at calculus itself, not the genius of Newton who gave so much to us before he even turned 23. And you are right about algebra as well, the original Arab texts are more like word problems rather than the standard notation we use today.
Not much mention of the corrosive influence of al-Ghazhali, whose ideas that causality did not exist and all phenomena were due to God's will alone
https://www.eurasiareview.com/10102019-al-ghazali-and-decline-of-sciences-in-islamic-world-analysis/
The foundations of modern physics were set by just one Englishman, Sir Isaac Newton, after whose work all physical phenomena known before the 20th century could be quantified. No Muslims assisted him and without his invention of calculus no physics of any value was possible.
"only 15 Nobel laureates have been Muslim out of 1,022, and even then, only 5 of them are in the field of science"
By comparison, 24% of Nobel Prizes in Physics and 19% of Nobel Prizes in Chemistry have gone to Jewish scientists; 6 of the latter while working at universities in Israel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_Nobel_laureates
Dear Reader thank you for your valuable input. I agree that towards the end of what we call the "Golden Age of Islam" teaching of al-Ghazhali and others like him sowed seeds whose wheat we still reap in the region. However, the meaningful contributions of the period, while it lasted, cannot be ignored.
Science is a method based on thousands of years of human development and accumulation of knowledge. No one man (or woman) can be credited to have "founded" one field or the other. Calculus is a very good example as you have pointed out.
Archimedes (3rd century BC) explored the ideas of infinity and infinitesimals. Using it to approximate the area of a shape (or curve) by dividing it into infinitely many simpler shapes. During the Golden Age of Islam, Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi invented algebra which, for the first time ever, introduced a system of reduction and balancing to solve equations. René Descartes in 1637 invented the cartesian plane (the X,Y plane) allowing algebra to become alive and present itself as a graph. Newton showed up only after these inventions and discoveries were made in order to invent calculus. A form of math which deals with rates of change, curves and infinities, without the work done by Archimedes, al-Khawarizmi and Descartes, Newton (and Gottfried Leibniz who co-discovered calculus and whose notations we actually use today i.e dy/dx) would never have been able to invent calculus and use it to explain the physical phenomenas of nature such as gravity or motion.
I hope this shines light on the misconception that Muslims, or anyone else before Newton, had little to offer to his work. I suggest reading https://www.stevenstrogatz.com/books/infinite-powers by Prof. Strogatz. He has clearly explained the journey of calculus and how it came into being.
Best
Mansoor
Newton said, with excessive modesty I believe, that he could see far because he stood on the shoulders of giants.
However, before Newton what was called "science" had little predictive ability. With Newton's work it could predict ballistic trajectories and the orbits of all the planets (except Mercury) to such precision that when an inconsistency was found, it was correctly attributed to the gravity of an unknown planet and led to the discovery of Neptune in its predicted orbit.
Science without predictive ability is mere supposition; the test of a scientific theory is that it can predict new phenomena, like the presence of a new planet, the bending of light by gravity or the conversion of mass to energy.
As for algebra, note that mathematical notation like the equal sign, a=b, was not invented until the mid 1500s (in Europe), so the Arab notion of algebra was closer to word games than to equations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equals_sign#History
I agree with you fully. My main correction was aimed at calculus itself, not the genius of Newton who gave so much to us before he even turned 23. And you are right about algebra as well, the original Arab texts are more like word problems rather than the standard notation we use today.