Thabit ibn Qurra

Thabit ibn Qurra (826-901 CE) was a mathematician, astronomer and physician active in Baghdad, originally from Harran in present day Turkey, who worked as part of the circle of scholars associated with the House of Wisdom. He translated numerous Greek scientific and mathematical texts, including works of Archimedes, Apollonius and Ptolemy, into Arabic, playing a central role in transmitting classical Greek science into the Islamic world and, eventually by further translation, into medieval Europe. His original mathematical work included a general formula for generating amicable numbers, pairs of numbers each of which equals the sum of the other's proper divisors, and a generalization of the Pythagorean theorem to non-right triangles. He also made contributions to statics and mechanics, including early work on the theory of the lever.