By Nurudeen Dauda
(Reviewed, but originally written (17/2/17)
Today marks the “THIRTEEN” in the series of my write ups on the contributions of muslims scholars to the development of modern science. It remains a challenge to the muslims the world over that despite the contributions of the early muslims scholars to the development of Modern science their names are hardly mentioned.
HIS BIOGRAPHY:
Al- Buzjani (949-998) is a great scholar. His full name is Abu al-Wafa Muhammad Ibn Muhammad Ibn Yahya Ibn Ismail Ibn Abbas al-Buzjani. He was born in Buzjan Khurasan on June 10, 940/328 presently in Iran. He learned mathematics from his uncles named Abu Omar al-Maghazli and Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Ataba. He is a muslim mathematician phenomenal in the golden era of Islam. According George Sarton in his book titled Introduction to the History of Science he is one of the greatest mathematicians who owned Islamic civilization. Abul Wafa as he is times called is a versatile scientist. In addition to being good in mathematics, he is renowned as a famous engineer and astronomer of his time.
HIS CONTRIBUTIONS:
He was a mathematician and astronomer who worked in Baghdad. He made important innovations in spherical trigonometry, and his work on arithmetics for businessmen contains the first instance of using negative numbers in a medieval Islamic text. He is also credited with compiling the tables of sines and tangents at 15 intervals. He introduced the secant and cosecant functions as well studied the interrelations between the six trigonometric lines associated with an arc.
Abul Wafa was recorded as the first mathematician who sparked the general formula of the genus. In addition, the mice were ma mate sparked a new method of forming a sine table. He confirmed the value of the sine of 30 degrees to the eighth desimel.The science of trigonometry as known today was established by this great Islamic mathematician. He established several trigonometric identities such as sin( a ± b ) in their modern form, where the Ancient Greek mathematicians had expressed the equivalent identities in terms of chords.
On Astronomy: Abu Al-Wafa was the first to build a wall quadrant to observe the sky. It has been suggested that he was influenced by the works of Al-Battani as the latter describes a quadrant instrument in his Kitab az-Zij .His use of tangent helped to solve problems involving right-angled spherical triangles , and developed a new technique to calculate sine tables, allowing him to construct more accurate tables than his predecessors.
May Allah guide us!
Nurudden Dauda nurudeendauda24@yahoo.com