Prof. Dr. Fuat Sezgin (1924–2018) and His Contributions to the History of Medical Sciences
1Department of the History of Pharmacy and Ethics, Erciyes University Faculty of Pharmacy, Kayseri, Turkey
J Clin Pract Res 2019; 41(1): 121-124 DOI: 10.14744/etd.2019.27443
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Abstract

Prof. Dr. Fuat Sezgin (1924–2018), a renowned Turkish orientalist and historian of science, was the founder and long-term director of the Institute of the History of the Arab-Islamic Sciences at J.W. Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany since 1982. With respect to medical sciences, he outlined the historical development of medical literature in Islamic civilizations by introducing the works and contributions of many medical authors of the Islamic Golden Age. Among them, the third (1970) and fourth (1971) volumes of his voluminous work Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums (History of Arabic Writings), a systematically organized bio-bibliographical reference on the history of science and technology in the Islamic world, are of particular importance. He also established Frankfurt’s (1983) and Istanbul’s (2008) Museum for the History of Science and Technology in Islam, bringing together nearly 800 ingenious replicas of historical scientific instruments and medical tools.