Ibn al-Nafis

Ala al-Din Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn Abi al-Hazm al-Qurashi, called Ibn al-Nafis, was born in 1213 near Damascus, where he studied medicine at the Nuri hospital. He moved to Cairo and worked at the Nasiri hospital and later at the great Mansuri hospital, becoming one of the leading physicians of Mamluk Egypt. He also wrote on Islamic law, theology and grammar. In his Commentary on Anatomy in Avicenna's Canon he rejected the teaching, handed down from Galen, that blood passes from the right side of the heart to the left through invisible pores in the wall between them. Instead he argued that the wall is solid and that blood must travel from the right ventricle through the lungs, where it mixes with air, and back to the left ventricle. This is the first known description of the pulmonary circulation. His commentary was largely forgotten until an Egyptian physician, Muhyo al-Deen al-Tatawi, drew attention to it in 1924. Ibn al-Nafis died in Cairo in 1288, leaving his house and library to the Mansuri hospital.

Faith: Muslim physician remembered as a devout religious scholar. Source: Wikipedia

See also: Avicenna · Galen · William Harvey