Ibn al-Nafis

Ibn al-Nafis

ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Abī Ḥazm al-Qarashī (Arabic: علاء الدين أبو الحسن عليّ بن أبي حزم القرشي ), known as Ibn al-Nafīs (Arabic: ابن النفيس), was an Arab polymath whose areas of work included medicine, surgery, physiology, anatomy, biology, Islamic studies, jurisprudence, and philosophy. He is known for being the first to describe the pulmonary circulation of the blood. The work of Ibn al-Nafis regarding the right sided (pulmonary) circulation pre-dates the later work (1628) of William Harvey's De motu cordis. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Ibn al-Nafis has received more than 606,675 page views. His biography is available in 40 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 38 in 2019). Ibn al-Nafis is the 245th most popular philosopher (up from 249th in 2019), the 22nd most popular biography from Syria (up from 23rd in 2019) and the 3rd most popular Syrian Philosopher.

Ibn al-Nafis was a physician and scientist from the 13th century. He is most famous for his discovery of the pulmonary circulation, which states that blood flows from the right ventricle of the heart to the lungs where it is oxygenated and then to the left ventricle of the heart where it is pumped out to the rest of the body.