The Father of Modern Chemistry:Abu Mūsā Jābir ibn Hayyān is thought to have been born in Tus, Persia (modern day Iran). Jābir – whose name is commonly latinised to Geber in the west – was a polymath: a chemist and alchemist, astronomer and astrologer, engineer, geographer, philosopher, physicist, pharmacist and physician.Jābir proposed the mercury-sulfur theory, whereby metals differ from one another due to their varying proportions of sulfur and mercury. Unlike the elements we think of today, these names referred to certain principles, for which the element was the closest approximation in nature; sulfur characterised combustibility, and mercury metallic properties. Jābir wrote “the metals are all, in essence, composed of mercury combined and coagulated with sulphur… they differ from one another only because of the difference of their accidental qualities”.The use of experimentation in chemistry was Jābir’s greatest legacy. He is credited with using over twenty types of now basic chemical laboratory equipment, including the alembic and retort, and also describing many chemical processes, including crystallisation and distillation. He is believed to have discovered aqua regia, a mix of hydrochloric acid and nitric acid, which has the ability to dissolve gold, in the process of helping to justify alchemists’s search for the philosopher’s stone. Jābir also introduced several technical Arabic terms, such as Alkali , into the scientific vocabulary.It was Jābir’s recognition that experiments are vital to science that transformed the mystical practice of alchemy into what would become modern chemistry.
Hamdii Shukrii Usmaail 