Ali bin Abi Thalib

'Ali bin Abi Thaib (599-661) was one of the first followers of Islam and also the family of the Prophet Muhammad. According to Sunni Islam, he was the last Caliph of the first four caliphs. While the Shi'ites believe that he is the Imam at the same time the first caliph chosen by the Prophet Muhammad. Interestingly though Sunnis do not recognize the concept of Imamat they agreed to call with the title of Imam Ali, so Ali was the only one who as well as Imam Caliph. Ali is a cousin of Muhammad, and after marrying Fatimah az-Zahra, he became in-law of Muhammad.

Shi'ites believe that Ali was the caliph who is entitled to replace the Prophet Muhammad, and he has been appointed by God's command in the Wadi Rabigh. Shiite Ali elevated position above the other Companions of the Prophet who, like Abu Bakr and Umar bin Khattab.

Shiite always add the name of Ali ibn Abi Talib with alayhi Salam (USA) or may Allah bestow safety and welfare.

Some Sunnis are those who become members of the Umayyad dynasty of Ali and his supporters look the same as the other Sahaba.

Sunni Ali's name added to the quoted anhu (RA) or may Allah bestow Rida (the likes of) it. This Supplement also the same as that given to other Sahaba.

25. MARTIN LUTHER [ 1483-1546 ]

Martin Luther, the man whose defiance of the Roman Catholic Church inaugurated the Protestant Reformation, was born in1483, in the town of Eisleben, in Germany. He received a good university education, and for a while (apparently at his father's suggestion) he studied law. However, he did not complete his legal education, but instead chose to become an Augustinian monk. In 1512, he received the degree of Doctor of Theology from the University of Wittenberg, and soon thereafter joined its faculty.

Luther's grievances against the Church arose gradually. In 1510, he had taken a trip to Rome, and had been shocked at the venality and worldliness of the Roman clergy. But the immediate issue that stimulated his protest was the Church practice of selling indulgences. (An indulgence was a remission, granted by the Church, of the penalties for sin; it might include a reduction of the time that a sinner would have to spend in purgatory.) On October 31, 1517, Luther posted on the door of the church at Wittenberg his celebrated Ninety-five Theses, in which he strongly denounced Church venality in general, and the practice of selling indulgences in particular. Luther sent a copy of his Ninety- five Theses to the Archbishop of Mainz. In addition, the Theses were printed, and copies were widely distributed in the area.

The scope of Luther's protests against the Church rapidly broadened, and he soon came to deny the authority of the Pope, and of general Church councils, insisting that he would be guided only by the Bible and by plain reason. Not surprisingly, the Church did not look kindly upon these views. Luther was summoned to appear before Church officials, and after various hearing and orders to recant, he was finally pronounced a heretic and an outlaw by the Diet of Worms (1521), and his writings were proscribed.

24. JAMES CLERK MAXWELL [ 1831-1879 ]

The great British physicist James Clerk Maxwell is best known for his formulation of the set of four equations that express the basic laws of electricity and magnetism.

Those two fields had been investigated extensively for many years before Maxwell, and it was well known that they were closely related. However, although various laws of electricity and magnetism had been discovered that were true in special circumstances, before Maxwell there was no overall, unified

theory. In his set of four short (though highly sophisticated) equations, Maxwell was able to describe exactly the behavior and interaction of the electric and magnetic fields. By so doing, he transformed a confusing mass of phenomena into a single, comprehensive theory. Maxwell's equations have been employed extensively for the past century in both theoretical and applied science.

The great virtue of Maxwell's equations is that they are general equations, which hold under all circumstances. All the previously known laws of electricity and magnetism can be derived from Maxwell's equations, as well as a large number of other, previously unknown results.

The most important of these new results was deduced by Maxwell himself. From his equations it can be shown that periodic oscillations of the electromagnetic field are possible. Such oscillations, called electromagnetic waves, when once started will propagate outward through space. From his equations, Maxwell was able to show that the speed of such electromagnetic waves would be approximately 300,000 kilometers (186,000 miles) per second. Maxwell recognized that this was the same as the measured speed of light. From this, he correctly concluded that light itself consists of electromagnetic waves.

23. MICHAEL FARADAY [ 1791-1867 ]

This is the age of electricity. It is true that our era is sometimescalled the space age and sometimes called the atomic age; however, space travel and atomic weapons, whatever their potential importance, have relatively little impact upon our everyday lives. But we use electrical devices constantly. In fact, it seems safe to say that no technological feature so completely permeates the modern world as does the use of electricity.

Many men have contributed to our mastery of electricity Charles Augustine de Coulomb, Count Alessandro Volta, Hans Christian Oersted, and Andre Marie Ampere are among the most important. But towering far above the others are two great British scientists, Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell. Though the work of the two men was in part complementary, they were in no sense collaborators, and each man's individual achievements entitle him to a high place on this list.

Michael Faraday was born in 1791, in Newington, England. He came from a poor family and was largely self-educated. Apprenticed to a bookbinder and bookseller at the age of fourteen, he used the opportunity to read extensively. When he was twenty, he attended lectures given by the famous British scientist, Sir Humphry Davy, and was fascinated. He wrote to Davy, and eventually got a job as his assistant. Within a few years, Faraday was making important discoveries of his own. Although he lacked a good background in mathematics, as an experimental physicist he was unsurpassed.

22. JAMES WATT [ 1736-1819 ]

The Scottish inventor James Watt, the man who is often described as the inventor of the steam engine, was the key figure of the Industrial Revolution.

Actually, Watt was not the first man to build a steamengine. Similar devices were described by Hero of Alexandria in the 1st century. In 1698, Thomas Savery patented a steam engine that was used for pumping water, and in 1712 an Englishman, Thomas Newcomen, patented a somewhat improved version.

Still, the Newcomen engine had such a low efficiency that it was useful only for pumping water out of coal mines.

Watt himself became interested in the steam engine in 1764, while repairing a model of Newcomen's device. Watt, although he had received only one year's training as an instrument maker, had great inventive talent. The improvements which he made upon Newcomen's invention were so important that it is fair to consider Watt the inventor of the first practical steam engine.

Watt's first great improvement, which he patented in 1769, was the addition of a separate condensing chamber. He also insulated the steam cylinder, and in 1782 he invented the double- acting engine. Together with some smaller improvements, these innovations resulted in an increase in the efficiency of the steam engine by a factor of four or more. In practice, this increase of efficiency meant the difference between a clever but not really very useful device, and an instrument of enormous industrial utility.

Watt also invented (in 1781) a set of gears for converting the reciprocal motion of the engine into a rotary motion. This device greatly increased the number of uses to which steam engines could be put. Watt also invented a centrifugal governor (1788), by which the speed of the engine could be automatically con trolled; a pressure gauge (1790); a counter; an indicator; and a throttle valve, in addition to various other improvements.

Watt himself did not have a good head for business. However, in 1775 he formed a partnership with Matthew Boulton, who was an engineer and a very capable businessman. Over the next twenty-five years, the firm of Watt and Boulton manufactured a large number of steam engines, and both partners became wealthy men.

21. CONSTANTINE THE GREAT [ C. 280 - 337 ]

Constantine the Great was the first Christian emperor of Rome. By his adoption of Christianity, and by his various policies encouraging its growth, he played a major role in transforming it from a persecuted sect into the dominant religion of Europe.
Constantine was born about 280, in the town of Naissus (present day Nis), in what is now Yugoslavia. His father was a high-ranking army officer, and Constantine spent his younger days in Nicomedia, where the court of the Emperor Diocletian was situated.
Diocletian abdicated in 305, and Constantine's father, Con-stantius, became the ruler of the western half of the Roman Empire. When Constantius died the following year, Constantine was proclaimed emperor by his troops. Other generals, however, disputed his claim, and a series of civil wars followed. These ended in 312 when Constantine defeated his remaining rival, Max-entius, at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, near Rome.
Constantine was now the undisputed ruler of the western half of the Empire; however, another general, Licinius, rulgd the eastern half. In 323, Constantine attacked and defeated Licinius also, and from then until his death in 337 was sole ruler of the Roman Empire.
It is uncertain just when Constantine became converted to Christianity. The most usual story is that on the eve of the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, Constantine saw a fiery cross in the sky, together with the words "By this sign shalt thou conquer." Regardless of how or when he was converted, Constantine became deeply dedicated to the advancement of Christianity. One of his early actions was the Edict of Milan, under which Christianity became a legal and tolerated religion. The Edict also provided for the return of Church property which had been confiscated during the preceding period of persecution, and it established Sunday as a day of worship.
The Edict of Milan was not motivated by general feelings of religious toleration. On the contrary, Constantine's reign may be said to mark the beginning of the official persecution of the Jews that wras to persist in Christian Europe for so many centuries.

20. ANTOINE LAURENT LAVOISIER [ 1743-1794 ]

The great French scientist Antoine Laurent Lavoisier was the most important figure in the development of chemistry. At the time of his birth, in Paris, in 1743, the science of chemistry lagged far behind physics, mathematics, and astronomy. Large numbers of individual facts had been discovered by chemists, but

there was no adequate theoretical framework in which to fit these isolated bits of information. At that time, it was incorrectly believed that air and water were elementary substances. Worse still, there was a complete misunderstanding of the nature of fire. It was believed that all combustible materials contained a hypothetical substance called "phlogiston," and that during combustion the inflammable substance released its phlogiston in

to the air.

In the interval from 1754 to 1774, talented chemists such as Joseph Black, Joseph Priestley, Henry Cavendish, and others had isolated such important gases as oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide. However, since these men accepted th phlogiston theory, they were quite unable to understand the nature or significance of the chemical substances they hai discovered. Oxygen, for example, was referred to a

dephlogisticated air, i.e., air from which all the phlogiston ha<>

not be made until the fundamentals were correctly understood.