TITLE: Islamic Science and the Making of Renaissance Europe
SPEAKER: George Saliba
EVENT DATE: 04/27/2006
RUNNING TIME: 84 minutes
DESCRIPTION:
George Saliba, senior distinguished visiting scholar in the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, presented a talk on "Islamic Science and The Making of Renaissance Europe."
Saliba's illustrated talk explored the scientific ideas that passed from the Islamic world to the European Renaissance during the 15th and 16th centuries. He showed the connection between mathematical innovations produced in the Islamic world and mathematical astronomy during the Renaissance. Saliba relied on evidence that was culled from copies of original Arabic scientific manuscripts and their Latin counterparts.
Speaker Biography: Librarian of Congress James H. Billington named George Saliba to a 10-month post as a Kluge scholar last July. Saliba is professor of Arabic and Islamic science in the Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University. He received a master's degree in Semitic languages and a doctorate in Islamic sciences from the University of California at Berkeley. Saliba has been a professor at Columbia since 1979.
