Avicenna

Avicenna (/ˌævᵻˈsɛnə/; Latinized form of Ibn-Sīnā, Arabic full name Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Al-Hasan ibn Ali ibn Sīnā أبو علي الحسين ابن عبد الله ابن سينا‍; c. 980 – June 1037) was a Persian polymath who is regarded as one of the most significant thinkers and writers of the Islamic Golden Age.

Of the 450 works he is known to have written, around 240 have survived, including 150 on philosophy and 40 on medicine.

His most famous works are The Book of Healing – a philosophical and scientific encyclopedia, and The Canon of Medicine – a medical encyclopedia which became a standard medical text at many medieval universities and remained in use as late as 1650. In 1973, Avicenna's Canon Of Medicine was reprinted in New York.

Besides philosophy and medicine, Avicenna's corpus includes writings on astronomy, alchemy, geography and geology, psychology, Islamic theology, logic, mathematics, physics and poetry.

Circumstances

Ibn Sina created an extensive corpus of works during what is commonly known as the Islamic Golden Age, in which the translations of Greco-Roman, Persian, and Indian texts were studied extensively. Greco-Roman (Mid- and Neo-Platonic, and Aristotelian) texts translated by the Kindi school were commented, redacted and developed substantially by Islamic intellectuals, who also built upon Persian and Indian mathematical systems, astronomy, algebra, trigonometry and medicine. The Samanid dynasty in the eastern part of Persia, Greater Khorasan and Central Asia as well as the Buyid dynasty in the western part of Persia and Iraq provided a thriving atmosphere for scholarly and cultural development. Under the Samanids, Bukhara rivaled Baghdad as a cultural capital of the Islamic world.

Avicenna (crater)

Avicenna is a lunar crater that lies on the far side of the Moon, just beyond the western limb on the northern rim of the Lorentz basin. It is named after the Persian physician Avicenna. It lies to the north-northwest of the larger crater Nernst, and to the southeast of Bragg.

The northern half of Avicenna has been obliterated by subsequent, overlapping impacts. The southern and southeastern rim is worn and eroded, but the outline can still be discerned. There is a small crater lying across the southern rim, although this formation is equally worn. Several tiny craterlets lie across the southern extent of Avicenna's floor.

Satellite craters

By convention these features are identified on lunar maps by placing the letter on the side of the crater midpoint that is closest to Avicenna.

See also

References

List of minor planets: 2001–3000