Ibn Sina (980–1037), known in the West as Avicenna, was a Persian polymath whose Canon of Medicine — a five-volume encyclopedia of anatomy, disease, drugs and treatment — remained the standard medical textbook in European universities into the 17th century, six hundred years after it was written.
A child prodigy born near Bukhara, he had memorized the Quran by ten and was a practicing physician by sixteen; at eighteen he was summoned to treat the Samanid ruler. He went on to write some 200 works on medicine, philosophy, astronomy and logic.
