Speakers
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Prof. Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu (Turkey)
Prof. Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu is a Turkish Academician, Diplomat, Member of Turkish Parliament and Member of Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).
İhsanoğlu Founder and Chair of the first Department of History of Science in Turkey, University of Istanbul (1984-2001). Taught at Ankara, Exeter, Istanbul and Munich Universities and lectured in leading universities in Europe and in the USA. Founder and Honorary President of Turkish Society for History of Science (TBTK,1989- ) and ISAR Foundation (1990). Former president of IUHPS, member of Academie Europea and International Academy of History of Science, and member of numerous international academic institutions. Holder of UNESCO Avicenna Medal (2004); Alexandre Koyré Medal (2008), distinguished medals from different countries and numerous honorary academic titles. Founding Director General of Research Centre for Islamic History, Art and Culture (IRCICA, 1980-2004) and the 9th Secretary General of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC, 2005-2013). Editor and co-author of the 18 volumes of History of Ottoman Scientific Literature; editor and co-author of the 2 volumes History of the Ottoman State and Civilization (Turkish, English, Arabic, Russian, Bosnian, Albanian); editor and co-author of Culture and Learning in Islam; author of Science Technology and Learning in the Ottoman Empire; Turks in Egypt and their Cultural Heritage (Turkish, Arabic, English); History of the Ottoman University-Darülfünun; The Islamic World in the New Century: the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, 1969-2009 (English, Turkish, Arabic, Russian, Urdu, Bengali); Islamophobia: From Confrontation to Cooperation, the Task Ahead (English, Russian). |
Prof. William R Shea (Switzerland)
William Shea received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, and he was a Fellow of Harvard University before becoming Professor of history and philosophy of science at McGill University in Montreal. He later taught at the University of Strasbourg from 1996 until 2003 when he was appointed Galileo Professor of History of Science at the University of Padua. He served as Chairman of the Standing Committee for the Humanities of the European Science Foundation, and he belongs to several academies including the Academia Europaea, the Royal Society of Canada, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awards the Nobel prizes. He is Past President of both the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science and the International Academy of the History of Science. He is the author or editor of 35 books, and he has published some 180 scholarly articles that have appeared in 10 languages. He has been Visiting Professor in several universities including the University of Rome, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, the Institute for Advanced Studies in Berlin, the National University of Mexico, the University of Sao Paolo, and the Institute of Advanced Studies in Bangalore, India.
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Prof. Charles Burnett (UK)
Charles Burnett, MA, PhD, LGSM is Professor of the History of Arabic/Islamic Influences in Europe at the Warburg Institute, University of London, and Co-Director of the Centre for the History of Arabic Studies in Europe. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, Corresponding Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America, and Fellow of the International Society for the History of Science. He has recently been leader of the Humanities in the European Research Area project on Encounters with the Orient in Early Modern European Scholarship (EOS). His research centres on the transmission of texts, techniques and artefacts from the Arab world to the West, especially in the Middle Ages. He has documented this transmission by editing and translating several texts that were first translated from Arabic into Latin, and also by describing the historical and cultural context of these translations. Throughout his research and his publications he has aimed to document the extent to which Arabic authorities and texted translated from Arabic have shaped European learning, in the universities, in medical schools and in esoteric circles. Among his books in this subject area are The Introduction of Arabic Learning into England (1997), Arabic into Latin in the Middle Ages: The Translators and their Intellectual and Social Context (2009) and Numerals and Arithmetic in the Middle Ages (2010). Other interests include Jesuit education in Japan in the late sixteenth century, the use of Japanese themes in Latin drama in Europe in the seventeenth century and the use of music in therapy and in the Christian mission
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Prof. George Saliba (US)
George Saliba, is professor of Arabic and Islamic Science, Columbia University, Distinguished Senior Scholar at the Kluge Center of the Library of Congress (2005-2006), and a Carnegie Scholar (2009-2010).
He is the author of Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance, MIT Press (2007, paper 2011), A History of Arabic Astronomy: Planetary Theories During the Golden Age of Islam (NYU Press 1995), Rethinking the Roots of Modern Science: Arabic Manuscripts in European Libraries, (Occasional Paper, CCAS, Georgetown, Washington DC, 1999), the Astronomical Work of Mu’ayyad al-Dīn al-‛Urḍī (d. 1266, Markaz Dirāsāt al-Waḥda al-‛Arabīya, Beirut, 3rd. ed. 2001), and the most recently Late Arabic Scientific Commentaries, Their Role and their Originality: Works of Shams al-Dīn al-Khafrī, (Arabic, al-Furqan, 2015). |
Prof. David King (Germany)
David A. King is a British orientalist and historian of science who has published extensively on the history of Islamic astronomy (davidaking.org). He studied Maths at Cambridge, Education at Oxford and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures at Yale, and he has worked in manuscript libraries and museums around the world. After directing a Smithsonian Institution project in Cairo to catalogue the 2,500 Arabic scientific manuscripts preserved there (1972-79), he became Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Literatures at New York University (1979-85), and then Professor of the History of Science at the J. W. Goethe University in Frankfurt (1985-). Many of his papers are reprinted in five Variorum volumes: Islamic mathematical astronomy; Islamic astronomical instruments; Astronomy in the service of Islam; Medieval European astrolabes; and Islamic astronomy and geography. The Al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation generously co-published his book World-Maps for finding the direction and distance to Mecca in 1999. His 2,000-page volumes on Islamic astronomical timekeeping, the determination of the prayer-times over the centuries, and all manner of instruments, was published in 2004/05 as In Synchrony with the Heavens – Studies in astronomical timekeeping and instrumentation in medieval Islamic civilization.
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Prof. Mohamed El-Gomati (UK)
Mohamed El-Gomati is Professor of Electronics at the University of York, UK. His research interests are in the fields of Surface Science and Electron Optics with particular emphasis on the development of novel instrumentation for nanostructure analysis. He is the author and co-author of more than 200 articles and patents in these fields. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics (IoP) and the Royal Microscopical Society (RMS). His interests extend to history of physics with particular emphasis on history of optics within Muslim civilisation. He is the Chairman of the Foundation for Science, Technology and Civilisation (UK) and a Trustee of the educational charity, Curriculum Enrichment for the Future and is an advisor to a number of UK and overseas universities. He was awarded the UKESCA award 1993, the Cosslett Award by the Microbeam Society of America (2008), the Fazlur Rahman prize for Science and Engineering (2009), and the British Muslims Award for Science (2013). In 2012, Professor El-Gomati was awarded an OBE for his services to science.
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Prof. Siegfried Zielinski (Germany)
Siegfried Zielinski, Professor of Media Theory, special research field archaeology and variantology of the arts and media at the University of Arts (UdK) Berlin; Michel Foucault Professor of Media Archaeology and Techno-Culture at the European Graduate School in Saas Fee; Rector of the University of Arts and Design Karlsruhe; Director of the Vilém-Flusser-Archive at the UdK Berlin (1998-2016); Founding Director of the Academy of Media Arts Cologne (1994–2000).
Publications in English include:
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Prof. Charles Falco (US)
Charles Falco has joint appointments in Optical Sciences and Physics at the University of Arizona where he holds the UA Chair of Condensed Matter Physics. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Optical Society of America, and the Society of Photo-optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE), has published more than 275 scientific manuscripts, co-edited two books, has seven U.S. patents, and given over 400 invited talks at conferences, research institutions, and cultural organizations in 32 countries. However, in addition to his scientific research, he was co-curator of the Solomon R. Guggenheim museum's "The Art of the Motorcycle" which, with over 2 million visitors in New York, Chicago, Bilbao, and the Guggenheim Las Vegas, was by far the most successful exhibition of industrial design ever assembled. More recently, he and the world-renowned artist David Hockney found artists of such repute as van Eyck, Bellini and Caravaggio used optical projections in creating portions of their work. Three international conferences have been organized around these discoveries, and recognition for them includes the Ziegfield Lecture Award from the National Art Education Association, the Dwight Nicholson Medal from the American Physical Society, and a presentation in the opening ceremony of the 2015 United Nations 'International Year of Light'. Pursuing even earlier documentation of the use of optics resulted in new discoveries that have revealed Ibn al-Haytham's contributions to broad areas of European culture.
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Prof. Salim Al-Hassani (UK)
Salim T S Al-Hassani is Emeritus Professor at the university of Manchester. President and founder of the Foundation of Science, Technology and Civilisation (UK). Published hundreds of papers and books. His most popular book “1001 inventions: The Enduring Legacy of Muslim Civilization” was published by National Geographic with a forward by HRH Prince Charles. In 2016 he was awarded the King Abdullah Book Award for translation of the Isfizari Corpus, which he co-edited in Arabic and translated into English, published by Al-Furqan. In 2010, awarded the British Science Association Fellowship for his work in promoting the scientific and technological achievements within Muslim culture. New York Hall of Science awarded him the Global Science Award. In 2012, elected as one of the Entovation100 at the World Summit for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Boston, USA. He is Fellow of the Energy Institute, member of the Literary and Philosophical Society Manchester and member of the Institute of Directors. Named amongst the 500 most influential Muslims, in the category of science and technology, for the years 2011 to 2016.
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Prof. Andrea Bernardoni (Italy)
Andrea Bernardoni completed his PhD in History of Science at the University of Florence. He is researcher and member of curatorial staff at the Institute of the History of since and director of ArtesMechanicae, international research team for the history of science and technology (www.artesmechanicae.it).
His main publications in the History of Science are:
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Prof. Julio Samso’ (Spain)
Julio Samsó, Emeritus Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies of the University of Barcelona. He obtained his Master’s and Doctor’s degree at the same University of Barcelona and studied also in the Muhammad V’s University (Rabat, Morocco) and in the University of Alexandria (Egypt). He has also been professor of the University of La Laguna (Canary Islands) and of the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona. He is a specialist in the History of Medieval Science, and particularly in the History of Astronomy in al-Andalus and the Maghrib. He has published 14 books and about 200 articles. Among his most relevant publications we find the following books: Las Ciencias de los Antiguos en al-Andalus (2nd ed. Almería, 2011), Islamic Astronomy and Medieval Spain(Aldershot,1994), Astronomy and Astrology in al-Andalus and the Maghrib (Aldershot, 2007), Astrometeorología y astrología medievales (Barcelona, 2008). He is now writing a new book entitled “On both sides of the Strait of Gibraltar. Studies in the History of Medieval Astronomy in the Iberian Peninsula and the Maghrib.
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Prof. Glen Cooper (US)
Glen M. Cooper is a visiting assistant professor in the history department at Claremont McKenna College, while seeking a permanent academic position. At Claremont, he has taught various courses in history and religion, including Middle East, Medieval Europe, Byzantium, India, Qur’an, and history of science and medicine. He holds an undergraduate degree in mathematical physics, but has pursued advanced studies in languages and Islamic scientific civilization at Oxford and Columbia. A Greco-Arabist, he has published on the transmission of medical and astronomical concepts from Greek into Arabic, and from Arabic into Latin and beyond. His 2011 Arabic edition and study of Galen’s treatise on the medical critical days (De diebus decretoriis; kitab ayyam al-buhran) laid the foundation for further publications on the intersections of medicine and astrology in the Greco-Arabic and Latin traditions. In addition to interests in instruments and technology, his current monograph projects include: a study of the foundations of astrology and medicine in the Abbasid period, and a study of the body politic metaphor as it passed through Hellenistic Greek, Roman, Islamic, Byzantine, and Medieval Latin cultures.
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Prof. Karen Pinto (US)
Karen Pinto is a native of Karachi, Pakistan. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University. She has worked extensively with medieval Islamic maps in manuscript libraries around the world. Her book, Medieval Islamic Maps: An Exploration, was recently published by The University of Chicago Press, 2016. Her other publications include: “Passion and Conflict: medieval Islamic views of the West," (Mapping Medieval Geographies, ed. Keith Lilley, Cambridge University Press, 2013); “Searchin’ his eyes, lookin’ for traces: Piri Reis’ World Map of 1513 & Its Islamic Iconographic Connections (A Reading Through Bağdat 334 and Proust),” (Journal of Ottoman Studies, 2012); "The Maps Are The Message: Mehmet II’s Patronage of an ‘Ottoman Cluster,’" (Imago Mundi, 2011); and numerous encyclopedia entries on Islamic cartography. She is the recipient of a 2013-14 NEH fellowship to complete a book manuscript on “The Mediterranean in the Islamic Cartographic Imagination.”
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Mr Ahmed Salim (UK)
Ahmed Salim is a British social entrepreneur and producer of award-winning media productions including films, international exhibitions, live shows, books and educational and social campaigns that have engaged more than 300 million people around the world.
He is co-founder and Managing Director of the '1001 Inventions’ organisation, which leads global efforts to raise awareness of scientific and cultural Muslim heritage. Ahmed Salim is the architect of the '1001 Inventions' global network of strategic partnerships with more than 200 organisations including National Geographic Society, UNESCO and the United Nations. His films have been seen by more than 250 million people, won 27 international awards and star high profile people such as Sir Ben Kingsley, Omar Sharif and HRH Queen Rania of Jordan. His latest film on Ibn Al-Haytham was screened globally at special events to honour Ibn Al-Haytham including the United Nations HQ, UNESCO HQ, London’s Royal Society and in Washington DC under Obama’s patronage. He is co-founder of the financial industry platforms IslamicFinance.com and Sukuk.com. He co-founded music companies ETM International and Andante Studios with international artist Sami Yusuf. Ahmed Salim appears on 'The 500 Most Influential Muslims' lists of 2015/2016/2017. |