Al-Biruni, an 11th-century Persian polymath, calculated the Earth's radius using trigonometry to within about one percent of its modern accepted value and wrote one of the earliest works of comparative religion and anthropology, based on years of direct study of Indian culture and texts. His insistence on empirical measurement and fair-minded description of other cultures marks him as one of the great methodical minds of the Islamic Golden Age.
Scholar
Al-Biruni
البيروني
Abbasid era · 973–1048 CE
A polymath scholar of astronomy, mathematics and comparative religion, admired for his meticulous, evidence-based method.
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