Prof. Dr. Fuat. Sezgin
Prof. Dr. Fuat Sezgin is the founder of one of the established research centre in the world which became the source of knowledge and heritage of Arab-Muslim culture – Historical Arab-Islamic Institute of Science at Johnn Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany.
The 80-year old Professor started his research in Turkey where he produced a dissertation on Imam Al-Bukhari who was a relater of Hadith of Prophet Muhammad.
His research focused on Arabic science until 7th AC beside knowledge sources from Greece.
He left Turkey and came to Germany in 1962 and work as visiting lecturer at a university in Frankfurt . At that time, he love Arab science history and take the subject as his thesis study for his PHD in 1965.
In the same year, Fuat had successfully published his first volume of Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums on history and religion.
Additional volume on his works was produced soon after that comprise of a volume on Medical Science in 1970, Chemistry, and Alchemical in 1971, Mathematics (1974) followed by Mathematics science such as astronomy and astrology until 1979 and later move into poetry, grammar and lexicography.
In 1978, Fuat was the first person to receive the King Faisal Prize award for Islamic Sciences from Saudi Arabia government for his achievement and success.
The award later had inspired him to register continues success and receive financial assistance from Arab countries to further his researches.
The financial assistance had brought to the formation of the Institute for the History of Arabic-Islamic Sciences which was opened in Frankfurt in 1982.
Since then the institute had published Dr Fuat researches and republished the documents and collection of his essays.
Fuat not only use the institute to compile and preserve all his studies but also develop the institute as centre of reference.
At the institute he placed collection of unique scientific equipment and models during the middle age of Islam in the field astronomy and geography, horology and navigational, optic, mechanical sciences, chemistry and medical.
He also developed objects especially musical instruments based on the text from the middle age in the form of replica of original objects.
The Institute also compiled continues science achievements which were developed all over the continents before the centuries.
Its include collection of equipment from Baghdad, Andalusia and West Europe which were used during the 9th century until 16 century.
Fuat was respected for his commitment as researcher for more than a decade especially in mathematical geography as well as his application in cartography.
The third volume of the Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums had discussed on these topics.
Systematically observation on measurement as well as its relationship with trigonometry process and geometry which simplifies the process to identify the coordination, size relationship and position had brought to the revising of the world map.
The research had made easy for Al-Biruni in his works to produce east Islamic world map in the year 1000 AC.
He later found out that only Islamic map could explain on the Europe cartography in the modern era.
Fuat emphasis on two main factors:
- Scientific culture of Arab intellectuals using Greece culture as well as their contributions to the emergence of Renaissance in Europe.
- There is a similarity in tradition on scientific reasoning used by Europe and Islam that is using the same language.
(source: Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, Malaysia )