Experimental optics and refraction (Alhazen)
Óptica experimental y estudio de la refracción
- Date
- c. 1021 · confidence high
- Place
- Cairo, Egypt
- Credited to
- Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen)
- People
- 👤 Alhacén965–1038
- Field
- Communication
What was discovered
In the 'Kitab al-Manazir', Alhazen establishes that vision occurs through light entering the eye, experimentally studies refraction, the camera obscura and lenses, and founds the experimental method in optics. He breaks with the Greek theory of visual emission.
Ibn Sahl, in Baghdad (984), had already used a geometric relation equivalent to Snell's law to design lenses; Alhazen does not formulate it in that form.
What it led to
- Medieval Latin optics (Witelo, Bacon, Peckham)
- Controlled experimental method
- Renaissance perspective and the camera obscura
- Snell's law and Kepler's optics
Built on
- Euclidean axiomatic geometryc. 300 BCE
- Euclid's Optics: geometry of the visual conec. 300 BCE
- Ptolemy's Optics: measuring angles of refractionc. 150
- Ibn Sahl's law of refraction984
- Euclid's geometry
- Ibn Sahl (984) on anaclastic lenses
Made possible
- Height of the atmosphere from twilightc. 1070
- Kamal al-Din al-Farisi's explanation of the rainbowc. 1309
- Spectacles (c. 1286)
- Camera obscura as an instrument
- Magnifying lenses