Western Culture Global Presents

The Top 100 Heroes of Western Culture
These individuals have most contributed to replacing ignorance with knowledge, savagery with civilization, disease with health, tyranny with liberty, poverty with abundance, and despair with happiness.



#33: Avicenna / Ibn Sina (980-1037)

Avicenna or Ibn Sina (980-1037) was a Persian physician, scientist, mathematician and philosopher. He was one of the most influential thinkers of the Middle Eastern Golden Age.

Between the years of 750-1200, significant elements of Western culture, namely the ideas of Ancient Greece, resided almost exclusively in the Middle East. Building upon the Greek contributions, Avicenna authored two important works: The Book of Healing was a philosophical encyclopedia based on the Aristotelian tradition, and The Canon of Medicine remains the most famous single book in the history of medicine and reigned supreme for six centuries in Europe and the Middle East.

Avicenna himself introduced many medical science advances such as recognition of the contagious nature of some diseases and their distribution by water and soil. He was also the first to describe meningitis and made contributions to anatomy, pharmacology, gynaecology and child health.

He also contributed to mathematics, physics, astronomy music and other fields. His ideas would influence both Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas.

While Europe was plunged into darkness, Middle Eastern individuals such as Avicenna kept the fire of civilization alive and even helped it to burn brighter.



Go to #34: Robert Grosseteste


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