Abu Musa Jābir ibn Hayyān (Arabic: جابر ابن حيان) (c. 721–c. 815), known also by his Latinised name Geber, was a prominent Muslim polymath: a chemist and alchemist, astronomer and astrologer, engineer, geologist, philosopher, physicist, and pharmacist and physician. He is "considered by many to be the father of chemistry". His ethnic background is not clear; although some sources state that he was an Arab, other sources introduce him as Persian.
Jabir Ibn Hayyan is widely credited with the introduction of the experimental method in alchemy, and with the invention of numerous important processes still used in modern chemistry today, such as the syntheses of hydrochloric and nitric acids, distillation, and crystallisation. His original works are highly esoteric and probably coded, though nobody today knows what the code is. On the surface, his alchemical career revolved around an elaborate chemical numerology based on consonants in the Arabic names of substances and the concept of takwin, the artificial creation of life in the alchemical laboratory. Research has also established that oldest text of Jabiran corpus must have originated in the scientific culture of northeastern Persia. This thesis is supported by the Persian language and Middle Persian terms used in the technical vocabulary.
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