Pathfinders

For over 700 years the international language of science was Arabic. Surveying the golden age of Arabic science, the author reintroduces such figures as the Iraqi physicist Ibn al-Haytham, who practised the modern scientific method over half a century before Bacon.

Brings alive the bubbling invention and delighted curiosity of the Islamic world ... his command of Arabic mathematical physics invests his story with sympathy as well as authority

A fascinating and user-friendly guide to this whole scientific movement

Jim Al-Khalili has a passion for bringing to a wider audience not just the facts of science but its history ... Just as the legacy of Copernicus and Darwin belongs to all of us, so does that of Ibn Sina and Ibn al-Haytham. To think otherwise, as this book so powerfully reveals, is to do disservice to the tradition to which they belong

Spry, informative and timely ... Al-Khalili takes the reader through a brisk survey of the highlights of the period

A fascinating introduction to a neglected area. His approachable style and ability to distil extensive knowledge into simple narrative makes Pathfinders an absorbing read

Enjoyable and informative ... provides ample evidence for the compatibility of Islam and science

He has brought a great story out of the shadows

This captivating book is a timely reminder of the debt owed by the West to the intellectual achievements of Arab, Persian and Muslim scholars

Professor Jim Al-Khalili, OBE FRS, is a physicist, author and broadcaster based at the University of Surrey. He received his PhD in theoretical nuclear physics in 1989 and has published over a hundred research papers on quantum physics.
His many popular science books have been translated into twenty-six languages. He is a recipient of the Royal Michael Faraday medal and the Institute of Physics Kelvin Medal.
In 2016 he received the inaugural Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication. He lives in Southsea, Hampshire, with his wife Julie.