Professor George Saliba Lecture

What Did Galileo Know of Arabic/Islamic Science and How Did He Know It?

Professor Saliba is a historian of Arabic and Islamic Science. He studies the development of scientific ideas from late antiquity to early modern times, with a special focus on the transmission of astronomical and mathematical ideas from the Islamic world to Renaissance Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. He received the History of Astronomy Prize from the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Science in 1996, and the History of Science Prize given by the Third World Academy of Science in 1993. He has also been selected as Distinguished Senior Scholar at the Kluge Center of the Library of Congress (2005-6), and at the Carnegie Scholars Program (2009-10). The visit of Dr. Saliba is an initiative of the Middle East Consortium of BC and of the Vancouver Muslim Community Centre in celebration of Islamic History Month, and is financially sponsored by the UBC Department of History; the Department of Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies; the Office of the Dean of Arts; the Office of the Dean of Applied Sciences; and Green College.