Abū Naṣr Manṣūr ibn ʿAlī ibn ʿIrāq al-Jaʿdī (; c. 960 – 1036) was a
Persian Muslim mathematician and
astronomer
An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. Astronomers observe astronomical objects, such as stars, planets, natural satellite, moons, comets and galaxy, galax ...
. He is well known for his work with the spherical
sine law.
[Bijli suggests that three mathematicians are in contention for the honor, Alkhujandi, Abdul-Wafa and Mansur, leaving out Nasiruddin Tusi. Bijli, Shah Muhammad and Delli, Idarah-i Adabiyāt-i (2004) ''Early Muslims and their contribution to science: ninth to fourteenth century'' Idarah-i Adabiyat-i Delli, Delhi, India, page 44, ]
Abu Nasri Mansur was born in
Gilan,
Persia
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...
, to the ruling family of
Khwarezm, the
Afrighids.
He was thus a prince within the political sphere. He was a student of
Abu'l-Wafa and a teacher of and also an important colleague of the mathematician,
Al-Biruni
Abu Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni (; ; 973after 1050), known as al-Biruni, was a Khwarazmian Iranian scholar and polymath during the Islamic Golden Age. He has been called variously "Father of Comparative Religion", "Father of modern ...
. Together, they were responsible for great discoveries in mathematics and dedicated many works to one another.
Most of Abu Nasri's work focused on mathematics, but some of his writings were
on astronomy. In mathematics, he had many important writings on
trigonometry
Trigonometry () is a branch of mathematics concerned with relationships between angles and side lengths of triangles. In particular, the trigonometric functions relate the angles of a right triangle with ratios of its side lengths. The fiel ...
, which were developed from the writings of
Ptolemy
Claudius Ptolemy (; , ; ; – 160s/170s AD) was a Greco-Roman mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were important to later Byzantine science, Byzant ...
. He also preserved the writings of
Menelaus of Alexandria and reworked many of the Greeks theorems.
He died in the
Ghaznavid Empire
The Ghaznavid dynasty ( ''Ġaznaviyān'') was a Persianate Muslim dynasty of Turkic peoples, Turkic ''mamluk'' origin. It ruled the Ghaznavid Empire or the Empire of Ghazni from 977 to 1186, which at its greatest extent, extended from the Oxus ...
(modern-day
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the Durand Line, east and south, Iran to the Afghanistan–Iran borde ...
) near the city of
Ghazna.
References
Further reading
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PDF version
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External links
Digitized manuscript() - Folios 8A-12A, Sprenger 1876 (
Berlin State Library
The Berlin State Library (; officially abbreviated as ''SBB'', colloquially ''Stabi'') is a universal library in Berlin, Germany, and a property of the German public cultural organization the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation ().
Founded in ...
)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mansur, Abu Nasr
10th-century Iranian mathematicians
960s births
1036 deaths
Scientists who worked on qibla determination
10th-century Iranian astronomers
11th-century Iranian astronomers
Astronomers of the medieval Islamic world
Scholars from the Ghaznavid Empire
People from Gilan province