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The Pioneer of Light: Alhazen and his Book of Optics

February 24, 20207:00 p.m.
MADRID
Casa Árabe Ambassadors’ Hall (at Calle Alcalá, 62, First Floor). 7:00 p.m. Free entry until the event’s capacity is reached.
In Spanish.

Casa Árabe and the publisher Ediciones Complutense are presenting this book in Madrid on Monday, February 24, at an event to be attended by the author, María Luisa Calvo Padilla.

Taking part in this meeting along with the author are Isabel María García Fernández, Vice-Rector of Culture, Sports and the University Extension Program at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid; Ignacio Mártil de la Plaza, a tenured professor of Physics at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid; Manuel Yuste Llandrés, a tenured professor emeritus of Physics at the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia; Carmen Carreras Béjar, Vice-President of the Division for Dissemination and Teaching of Physics at the Royal Spanish Physics Society; María Sagrario Millán, a tenured professor of Optics at the Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña, and Aitor Villafranca Velasco, a researcher with the CSIC.

Amongst the celebrations considered by the United Nations for declaring the year of 2015 to be the International Year of Light, one held special significance: celebrating the appearance, approximately one millennium ago, of the work by Arab scientist Ibn al-Haytham (who is better known as Alhazen), the Book of Optics or Kitab-al-Manazir. The first edition ever to come out in Europe from the Latin version of this great work dates back to the thirteenth century . After that, other translations were completed over the centuries. The book published now is dedicated to the life of Alhazen, his work, the Latin edition of the Book of Optics published in 1572 by German scientist Friedrich Risner, and the repercussions of its legacy on the later development of science in the West.

Presentation information sheet
The Pioneer of Light: Alhazen and his Book of Optics