Avicenna

Avicenna (or Ibn Sīnāas he was known in Arabia) was a widely influential 11th century polymath contributing to such disparate fields as Chemistry, Geology, Mathematics, Astronomy, Psychology and even Theology.

Avicenna not only described the formation of mountains and valleys, but also the movement of the planets and the transmutation of substances through alchemy. In addition, his influence over medicine was so far reaching, both geographically and historically, that his medical texts survived for hundreds of years in Europe long after the decline of his own scientific era.

Avicenna also stressed the scientific importance of a method of “experimentation as a means for scientific inquiry” rather than a dogmatic adherence to the knowledge of the ancients. This belief, though obvious to us today, was incredibly forward thinking for its time, and it wouldn’t be until the time of the Scientific Revolution hundreds of years later that Europeans would hold the same belief.

The House of Wisdom (Bayt al-Ḥikmah) a 13th C. intellectual academy in Baghdad

Al-Razi

Al-Razi was another prolific polymath who’s work had seemingly no limitations. His achievements range from being a pioneer in ophthalmology to being the first to distill a variety of chemical compounds like sulfuric acid in around the 9th Century.

Also believed to be the founding father of pediatrics (medicine for children), Al-Razi is considered by historians to have been the most important medical scholar in the Arabic world: like Avicenna, his medical texts survived in the Europe long after his death. Al-Razi even went as far as to write about medical ethics, attacking charlatans for their fake remedies. Such debates around fake medicine are so timeless that they are still happening today around traditional medicine and homeopathy.