5 Great Non-European Achievers


5. Imhotep
2650 – 2600 BC
Imhotep, an Egyptian polymath, is the first physician, architect and engineer whose name is known to history. He was high priest of Ra and chancellor to the Pharoah Djoser of the Third Dynasty. So great was his legacy that, despite being a commoner, he was granted divinity after his death. Imhotep was revered as a poet and fifteen hundred years after his death a song praised his acuity with language: “I have heard the words of Imhotep and Hordedef, with whose discourses men speak so much.” As an architect and engineer, he designed the 62 metre tall step pyramid for Djoser and is credited with the first known use of columns. Below his pyramid his name and title are given as “seal-bearer of the King of Lower Egypt, first one under the king, administrator of the Great Mansion, prince, chief of seers.” As a physician, a writing attributed to him was devoid of supernatural reasoning and made remarkable descriptions of various ailments and cures along with anatomical descriptions.

4. Zhang Heng
78 – 139 AD
A native of central China, Zhang Heng was an artist, poet, mathematician, geographer, astronomer, and statesman of the Eastern Han Dynasty (25 -220 AD). As an artist, he was considered among the four greatest of his time and his poetry was acclaimed by contemporaries and later commentators. Zhang Heng invented an early but efficient seismograph which could detect the direction of an earthquake up to 500 km (310 miles) away. In addition, he improved the accuracy of the Chinese water clock and invented both an odometer and a mechanical chariot that always pointed south. Zhang also improved the armillary sphere, adding the horizon and meridian rings. Not satisfied with a static three-dimensional model of the heavens, Zhang used complex gears and water power to make the globe rotate in order to display the changing positions of the heavens by season. He added a rotating pillar that portrayed the waxing and the waning of the moon. As an astronomer, he mapped and catalogued a total of 2,500 stars, more than twice as many as Ptolemy (83 – 161 AD). He believed in a geocentric model of the universe and discussed the spherical shape of the moon, the nature of solar and lunar eclipses, and the waxing and waning of the moon. His epitaph, written by his friend Cui Ziyu read, in part: “The excellence of his talent and the splendor of his art were one with those of the gods.”
3. Sushruta
600 BC
Sushruta, an ancient Indian physician, is considered by many to be the father of surgery. The work attributed to him and later followers bears his name, the Sushruta Samhita. Sushruta demonstrated knowledge of the circulation of blood and lymph and of the arteries. Sushruta connected obesity with heart disorders and diabetes, recommending physical activity in order to cure it. He conducted surgery for curing kidney stones and accurately described and recommended treatments for angina pectoris, hypertension, and leprosy. Sushruta laid the foundation for plastic surgery and related various methods for covering physical defects using skin grafts and other methods. He also described methods for labioplasty (the reduction in size of the labial hood) and rhinoplasty (nose surgery). The Sushruta Samhita travelled from the Arab world and reached Italy by the sixteenth century. The first major rhinoplasty in the western world was completed by Joseph Constantine Carpue in 1815, after having studied Indian methods for twenty years.
2. Abu Al-Qasim
936-1013 AD
Abu Al-Qasim, better known to the West as Abulcasis, was an Arabic surgeon, physician, and scientist from Spain. Considered by many to be the father of modern surgery, his medical text, Kitab Al Tasrif, profoundly influenced Islamic and European surgical procedure. He gave the earliest recorded description of hemophilia and described the Kocher method for treating dislocated shoulders long before it was described by its nineteenth century namesake. He specialized in cauterization and amputation and invented or improved over two hundred surgical instruments. His inventions included surgical needles and forceps as well as devices for the inspection of the ear, the inspection of the urethra’s interior, and the removal of foreign bodies from the throat. His use of catgut for internal stitching is still used today. Al-Qasim also described how to ligature blood vessels during surgery and how to prepare medication by sublimation and distillation. He performed and described operations in the areas of Ophthalmology, Otolaryngology, Obstetrics, Urology, and Orthopaedics. He stressed a positive relationships between doctors and patients and careful observation and diagnosis of illnesses. His Kitab Al Tasrif was highly influential in the Islamic world and was the definitive medical text for Western surgeons for nearly five hundred years.
1. Ibn Khaldun
1332 AD – 1406 AD
Ibn Khaldun was a brilliant North African polymath of Arab descent who was born Tunis but travelled extensively throughout North Africa. He was a statesman, philosopher, Islamic theologian and jurist, historian, astronomer, mathematician, economist, poet, and social scientist and is widely considered to be the father of historiography, cultural history, demography, philosophy of history, and sociology. Although his greatest interest was in history, his contributions in other areas were extensive. His writings anticipated later sociology and economics. Arnold J. Toynbee, the British historian, called Ibn Khaldun’s most famous work, the Muqadimmah, “a philosophy of history which is undoubtedly the greatest work of its kind that has ever been created by any mind in any time or place.” Toynbee also stated that Ibn Khaldun “appears to have been inspired by no predecessors, and to have found no kindred souls among his contemporaries, and to have no answering spark or inspiration in any successors.”

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