Al-Biruni

Khwarazmian-Persian polymath (973–1048)

Abu Reyhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni (Persian: ابوریحان محمد بن احمد بیرونی, romanized: Abū-Reyhān Bīrūnī; Arabic: أبو الريحان محمد بن أحمد البيروني; c. 973 – c. 1050), known as Biruni (بیرونی), was a Khwarazmian Iranian polymath of the Islamic Golden Age. Well versed in physics, mathematics, astronomy and the natural sciences, he also distinguished himself as a historian, chronologist and linguist, and has been described as the first anthropologist and a founding figure in comparative religion, geodesy and Indology. Born in Kath in Khwarazm, al-Biruni spent the first twenty-five years of his life there before moving, after the fall of the Afrighids in 995, between the courts of Bukhara, Tabaristan and Gurganj.

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