Aydın Sayılı

Image of Sayili on the 5 Lira note

Aydın Sayılı (born May 2, 1913 in Istanbul ; † October 15, 1993 in Ankara ) was a Turkish historian of mathematics and astronomy.

Sayılı spent part of his childhood in Iran because of his father's work. He attended elementary school in Istanbul, then middle school and boys' high school in Ankara and after graduating in 1933 studied at Harvard University , where he received his doctorate in history of science under George Sarton in 1942 (Institutions of Science and Learning in Medieval Islam) . Afterwards he was at the faculty in Ankara (from 1946 university ) and there he became professor for the history of science in 1952 (the first such chair in Turkey). From 1974 this was a separate department, whose director was Sayılı.

In his dissertation he described the development of observatories and hospitals in medieval Islam. This also resulted in his book on the history of astronomical observatories in Islam. In it he investigated in detail whether and by whom the observatories mentioned in the scriptures were built, who used them and what instruments were in them. It is considered a standard work. Later he dealt with the interrelation of the development of the sciences in Muslim countries and Western Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries (i.e. during the scientific revolution). As a mathematician, he published on Abd al-Hamīd ibn Turk , Thabit ibn Qurra and Abu Sahl al-Quhi . He also published Persian and Arabic poems related to astronomy and other sciences and to the history of astrology, optics and natural philosophy.

In 1989 he became an honorary member of the German Oriental Society . In 1992 he received the Nehru Medal from UNESCO and in 1973 the Polish Copernicus Medal.

His portrait was on a Turkish bank note .

Fonts

• The observatory in Islam and its place in the general history of the observatory, Publications of the Turkish Historical Societes , Series VII, No. 38, Ankara 1960, reprinted New York 1981
• Higher education in medieval Islam, Annales de l'Université de Ankara , Volume 2, 1948, pp. 30–71
• Copernicus and his monumental work , 1975 (in English and Turkish)

Web links

• Joseph W. Dauben , Christoph J. Scriba (eds.): Writing the history of mathematics , Birkhäuser 2002, pp. 516-518