• Question: WHO WAS THE FIRST EVER SCIENTIST ON THI EARTH??????? :)

    Asked by toxo10 to Zoe, Sharon, Louise, Jon, Daniel on 22 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Sharon Sneddon

      Sharon Sneddon answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      Well, I think no one knows for sure, and a lot of people think it is Roger Bacon, but I believe that a person called Ibn al-Haytham, who was born in Iraq was the first scientist. He was one of the first people to use experiments to test hypotheses, and he used a system of inquiry–the scientific method and this was way back in the year 965!

    • Photo: Louise Dash

      Louise Dash answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      The first human, probably. I think it’s partly our thirst for knowledge and discovery that makes us human and sets us apart from other lifeforms.

    • Photo: Jon Copley

      Jon Copley answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      Great question. If we take “first scientist” to be the first person to use what we would call the “scientific method” to find things out (doing experiments to test ideas, and developing an understanding of things by proving other ideas wrong), then it may have been someone called Ibn al-Haytham, who was born in Basra in AD 965.

      Here’s a webpage (and book) with some more about him:

      http://www.ibnalhaytham.net/

    • Photo: Daniel Richardson

      Daniel Richardson answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      tricky question…. Here’s one answer. There was a Persian doctor called Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi, or Rhazes in the west. When he was looking to build a new hospital in the 9th century, he hung up lots of meat around the city. He went back a week later and looked at which meat was the least rotten. In that place, where the meat decayed the least, he built the hospital.

      It may not be the best claim to be the first ‘experiment’. But it was a very clever thing to do, and he did it hundreds of years before we figured out the connection between disease and tiny invisible things like bacteria

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