Abu Ali al'Hasan ibn al'Haitam

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Given a light source and a spherical mirror, find the point on the mirror were the light will be reflected to the eye of an observer.

The problem leads to a quadratic which was solved with Greek style geometry. Al'Haitam had a less than satisfactory solution, Huygens found a good solution which Vicenzo Riccati and Saladini simplified and improved.

Al'Haitam wrote a treatise on optics, translated into Latin as Opticae thesaurus Alhazeni (1270).

Al'Haitam also worked on reflection, refraction, lenses, parabolic and spherical mirrors, spherical aberration and atmospheric refraction. He gave the first correct explanation of vision showing that light is reflected from an object into the eye.

In mathematics al'Haitam solved problems involving congruences using what is now called Wilson's theorem (John Wilson)

if p is prime then 1+(p-1)! is divisible by p .

References elsewhere in this archive:

Let me see Wilson's theorem

References:

1. Dictionary of Scientific Biography
2. Biography in Encyclopaedia Britannica
3. M Schramm, Ibn al'Haythams Stellung in der Geschichte der Wissenschaften, Fikrum wa fann 6 (1965), 2-22.
4. M Nazif and P Ghalioungui, Ibn at Haitam, an 11th-Century Physicist, Actes du Xe Congrès International d'histoire des sciences (Paris, 1964), I 569-571.
5. R Rashed, Ibn al-Haytham et le Théorème de Wilson, Archive for History of Exact Sciences 22 (1980), 305- .
6. J D Smith, The remarkable Ibn al-Haytham, Mathematical Gazette 76 (1992), 189-198.

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