Ibn al-Haytham: The Father of Modern Optics

Ibn al-Haytham, also known as Alhazen, was a pioneering 11th-century polymath from Iraq who fundamentally transformed our understanding of light and vision. He is celebrated as the "father of modern optics" for proving that we see by light entering the eye, not by rays emitted from it, and for championing a systematic experimental approach that foreshadowed the modern scientific method.