Ja'far Muhammad ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir

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Ja‘far Muḥammad ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir (800 - 873) (Arabic: جعفر محمد بن موسى بن شاكر‎) was a 9th century Persian astronomer, engineer, mathematician and physicist from Baghdad, the eldest of the Banū Mūsā brothers.

[edit] Works

Main article: Book of Ingenious Devices

In physics and astronomy, Muhammad ibn Musa was a pioneer of astrophysics and celestial mechanics. In the Book on the motion of the orbs, he hypothesized that heavenly bodies and celestial spheres were subject to the same laws of physics as Earth, unlike the ancients who believed that the celestial spheres followed their own set of physical laws different from those of Earth.^[1]

In mechanics and astronomy, Muhammad ibn Musa, in his Astral Motion and The Force of Attraction, proposed that there was a force of attraction between heavenly bodies,^[2] foreshadowing Newton's law of universal gravitation.^[3]

In mathematics, he wrote a critical revision on Apollonius' Conics, called the Premises of the book of conics.

^ George Saliba (1994). "Early Arabic Critique of Ptolemaic Cosmology: A Ninth-Century Text on the Motion of the Celestial Spheres", Journal for the History of Astronomy 25, p. 115-141 [116].
^ K. A. Waheed (1978). Islam and The Origins of Modern Science, p. 27. Islamic Publication Ltd., Lahore.
^ Robert Briffault (1938). The Making of Humanity, p. 191.

O'Connor, John J. & Robertson, Edmund F., “Jafar Muhammad Banu Musa”, MacTutor History of Mathematics archive
Golden Age of Persia, Richard Nelson Frye, p. 162-163.
D El-Dabbah, The geometrical treatise of the ninth-century Baghdad mathematicians Banu Musa (Russian), in History Methodology Natur. Sci., No. V, Math. Izdat. (Moscow, 1966), p. 131-139.

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