Abū Sahl al-Qūhī
Abū Sahl Wayjan ibn Rustam al-Qūhī (al-Kūhī; Persian: ابوسهل بیژن کوهی Abusahl Bijan-e Koohi) was a Persian[1] mathematician, physicist and astronomer. He was from Kuh (or Quh), an area in Tabaristan, Amol, and flourished in Baghdad in the 10th century. He is considered one of the greatest Muslim geometers, with many mathematical and astronomical writings ascribed to him.
He was the leader of the astronomers working in 988 AD at the observatory built by the Buwayhid Sharaf al-Dawla in Badhdad. He wrote a treatise on the astrolabe in which he solves a number of difficult geometric problems.
In mathematics he devoted his attention to those Archimedean and Apollonian problems leading to equations higher than the second degree. He solved some of them and discussed the conditions of solvability. For example, he was able to solve the problem of inscribing a regular pentagon into a square, resulting in an equation of fourth degree.[2] He also wrote a treatise on the "perfect compass", a compass with one leg of variable length that allows to draw any conic section: straight lines, circles, ellipses, parabolas and hyperbolas. It is likely that al-Quhi invented the device.[3]
Like Aristotle, al-Quhi proposed that the heaviness of bodies vary with their distance from the center of the Earth.[4]
The correspondence between al-Quhi and Abu Ishaq al-Sabi, a high civil servant interested in mathematics, has been preserved.[5]
Notes
- ↑ al-Quhi, Abu Sahl Wayjan ibn Rustam (c. 940-c. 1000)
- ↑ Hogendijk: "al-Kuhi's construction of an equilateral pentagon in a given square", Zeitschrift für Gesch. Arab.-Islam. Wiss., Volume 1, 1984, pp. 100-144; correction and addendum Volume 4, 1986/87, p.267
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.[dead link]
- ↑ Mohammed Abattouy (2002), "The Arabic Science of weights: A Report on an Ongoing Research Project", The Bulletin of the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies 4, p. 109-130
- ↑ Berggren: "The correspondence of Abu Sahl al-Kuhi and Abu Ishaq al-Sabi: a translation with commentaries", J. Hist. Arabic Sci., volume 7, 1983, pp. 39-124.
References
- Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. Reviews: Seyyed Hossein Nasr (1998) in Isis 89 (1) pp. 112-113; Charles Burnett (1998) in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 61 (2) p. 406.
- M. Steinschnieder, Lettere intorno ad Alcuhi a D. Bald. Boncompagni (Roma, 1863)
- Suter, Die Mathematiker und Astronomen der Araber (75-76, 1900).
- Jan Hogendijk: Two beautiful geometrical theorems by Abu Sahl Kuhi in a 17th century Dutch translation, Ta'rikh-e Elm: Iranian Journal for the History of Science 6 (2008), 1-36
- John Lennart Berggren, Hogendijk: The Fragments of Abu Sahl al-Kuhi's Lost Geometrical Works in the Writings of al-Sijzi, in: C. Burnett, J.P. Hogendijk, K. Plofker, M. Yano (eds): Studies in the History of the Exact Sciences in Honour of David Pingree, Leiden: Brill, 2003, pp. 605–665
External links
- Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. (PDF version)
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- Articles with dead external links from February 2015
- Articles containing Persian-language text
- Astronomers of medieval Islam
- Mathematicians of medieval Islam
- Medieval Persian mathematicians
- Medieval Persian astronomers
- Medieval Iraqi astronomers
- Medieval Iraqi mathematicians
- 10th-century mathematicians
- 940 births
- 1000 deaths
- Iranian scientists
- Iraqi scientists
- People from Amol
- 10th-century astronomers
- 10th-century Iranian people
- Buyid scholars
