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Category
Era
11 figures
Zhang Heng
78 – 139Built the first seismoscope and mapped 2,500 stars.
Aryabhata
476 – 550Gave place-value, an accurate π, and a rotating Earth in 499 CE.
Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi
780 – 850Gave the world algebra and, through his own name, the algorithm.
Al-Biruni
973 – 1048Measured Earth's radius to within 1% and wrote the first comparative anthropology of India.
Ibn Sina (Avicenna)
980 – 1037Wrote the medical textbook that trained Europe's doctors until 1650.
Su Song
1020 – 1101Built an astronomical clock tower with the first known escapement chain drive.
Shen Kuo
1031 – 1095Described the magnetic compass and deduced geological deep time.
Omar Khayyam
1048 – 1131Solved cubics geometrically, reformed the calendar, wrote the Rubaiyat.
Nasir al-Din al-Tusi
1201 – 1274Tusi couple; his planetary models likely reached Copernicus.
Ulugh Beg
1394 – 1449Sultan-astronomer whose star catalogue stood unmatched for two centuries.
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
1910 – 1995Worked out at nineteen why some stars must collapse into black holes.