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.

19. NICOLAUS COPERNICUS [ 1473-1543 ]

The great Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (Polish name: Mikolaj Kopernik), was born in 1473, in the city of Torun, on theVistula River, in Poland. He came from a well-to-do family. As a young man, Copernicus studied at the University of Cracow, where he became interested in astronomy. In his mid-twenties he went to Italy, where he studied law and medicine at the Universities of Bologna and Padua, and later received a doctorate in canon law from the University of Ferrara. Copernicus spent most
of his adult life on the staff of the cathedral at Frauenburg (Polish: Frombork), where he was a canon. Copernicus was never a professional astronomer, and the great work which has made him famous was accomplished in his spare time.
During his stay in Italy, Copernicus had become acquainted with the idea of the Greek philosopher, Aristarchus of Samos (third century b.c), that the earth and the other planets revolved about the sun. Copernicus became convinced of the correctness of this heliocentric hypothesis, and when he was about forty he began to circulate among his friends a short, handwritten manu script setting forth in preliminary form his own ideas on the subject. Copernicus spent many years taking the observations and
making the calculations that were necessary for the composition of his great book, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolution of the Celestial Spheres), in which he describes his theory in detail, and sets forth the evidence for it.
In 1533, when he was sixty years old, Copernicus delivered a series of lectures in Rome, in which he presented the principal points of his theory, without incurring papal disapproval. However, it was not until he was in his late sixties that Copernicus finally decided to have his book published; and it was not until the day he died, May 24, 1543, that he received the first copy of his book from the printer.

18. AUGUSTUS CAESAR [ 63 B.C - 14 A.D ]

Augustus Caesar, the founder of the Roman Empire, is one of the great pivotal figures in history. He ended the civil wars that had disrupted the Roman Republic during the first century B.C., and

he reorganized the Roman government so that internal peace and prosperity were maintained for two centuries.

Gaius Octavius (better known as Octavian; he did not receive the title "Augustus" until he was thirty-five years old) was born in 63 B.C. He was the grandnephew of Julius Caesar, who was the leading political figure of Rome during Octavian's youth. Julius Caesar, who had no legitimate sons of his own, liked the youth, and helped prepare him for a political career. However, when Caesar was assassinated in 44 B.C., Octavian was still only an eighteen-year-old student.

The death of Caesar set off a long and bitter struggle for power between various Roman military and political figures. At first, his rivals, who were all men of long experience in the rough arena of Roman politics, did not consider the youthful Octavian a serious threat. Indeed, the young man's only visible asset was that Julius Caesar had adopted him as his son. By making skillful use of this advantage, Octavian managed to win the support of some of Caesar's legions. Many of Caesar's troops, however, chose to support Mark Antony, who had been one of Caesar's closest associates. A series of battles over the next few years eliminated all the other contestants for power; by 36 B.C., Rome, and the many territories she had already conquered, were divided between Mark Antony, who controlled the eastern portion, and Octavian, who controlled the West. For a few years, there was an uneasy truce between them. During that time, Antony seems to have paid too much attention to his romance with

17. SHIH HUANG TI [ 259 B.C-210 B.C ]

The great Chinese emperor Shih Huang Ti, who ruled from 238-210 b.c, united China by force of arms and instituted a set of sweeping reforms. Those reforms have been a major factor in the cultural unity that China has maintained ever since.
Shih Huang Ti (also known as Ch'in Shih Huang Ti) was born in 259 b.c. and died in 210 b.c. To understand his importance, it is necessary to have some knowledge of the historical background of his times. He was born in the final years of the Chou dynasty, which had been founded about 1100 B.C. Centuries before his time, however, the Chou monarchs had ceased to be effective rulers, and China had become divided into a largi number of feudal states.
The various feudal lords were constantly at war with on another, and gradually, several of the smaller rulers wen eliminated. One of the most powerful of the warring states wa Ch'in, in the western portion of the country. The Ch'in ruler had adopted the ideas of the Legalist school of Chinese
philosophers as the basis of state policy. Confucius had suggestec that men should be governed primarily by the moral example o: a good ruler; but according to the Legalist philosophy, most mer were not good enough to be ruled in that way and could only be controlled by a strict set of laws firmly and impartially enforced. Laws were made by the ruler and could be changed at hu pleasure to further state policy.

16. CHARLES DARWIN [ 1809-1882 ]

Charles Darwin, the originator of the theory of organic evolution by means of natural selection, was born in Shrewsbury, England, on February 12, 1809 (on exactly the same day that Abraham Lincoln was born). At sixteen, he entered the University of Edinburgh to study medicine; however, he found both medicine

and anatomy dull subjects, and after a while transferred to Cambridge to study for the ministry. At Cambridge, he found such activities as riding and shooting far more agreeable than his studies. Nevertheless, he managed to impress one of his professors sufficiently to be recommended for the position of naturalist on the exploratory voyage of the H.M.S. Beagle. His father at first objected to Charles's accepting the appointment, feeling that such a trip would simply be a further excuse for the young man to delay settling down to serious work. Fortunately, the elder Darwin was persuaded to give his consent to the trip, for this was to prove one of the most rewarding ocean voyages in the history of

Western science.

Darwin set sail on the Beagle in 1831, at the age of twenty- two. In the course of the next five years, the Beagle sailed around the world, skirting the coasts of South America at a leisurely pace, exploring the lonely Galapagos Islands, and visiting other islands of the Pacific, the Indian Ocean, and the South Atlantic. During the long course of the voyage, Darwin saw many natural wonders, visited primitive tribes, discovered large numbers of fossils, and observed an enormous number of plant and animal species. Furthermore, he took voluminous notes on everything that he observed. These notes provided the basis for almost all his later work; from them, he derived many of his principal ideas, as well as the immense wealth of evidence by which he made his theories prevail.

Darwin returned home in 1836, and over the next twenty years he published a series of books which established his reputation as one of the leading biologists in England. As early as 1837, Darwin became convinced that animal and plant species were not fixed, but had evolved over the course of geologic history. At that time, however, he had no idea what might be the cause of such evolution. In 1838, however, he read An Essay on the Principle of Population by Thomas Malthus, and that provided him

with the vital clue to his notion of natural selection through com petition for survival. But even after Darwin had formulated the principle of natural selection, he did not rush to present his ideas

in print. He realized that his theory was bound to arouse a good deal of opposition, and he therefore spent a long time carefully assembling the evidence and marshalling the arguments in favor of his hypothesis.

15. PROPHET MOSES [ fl. 13 TH C. B.C ]

Probably no person in history has been so widely admired as the great Hebrew prophet Moses. Furthermore, his fame, as well as the number of people who respect him, has steadily grown throughout the ages. It is most likely that Moses flourished in the thirteenth century B.C., since Ramses II, generally thought to be the pharaoh of the Exodus story, died in 1237 b.c. During Moses' lifetime, as the Book of Exodus makes clear, there were a fair number of Hebrews who disagreed with his policies. Within five centuries, however, Moses wras revered by all the Jewish people. By 500 a.d., his fame and reputation had spread, along with Christianity, throughout much of Europe. A century later, Muhammad recognized Moses as a true prophet, and with the spread of Islam, Moses became an admired figure throughout the
Moslem world (even in Egypt). Today, some thirty-two centuries after he lived, Moses is honored by Jews, Christians, and Moslems alike, and is even respected by many agnostics. Thanks to modern communications, he is probably even better known today than he was in the past.
Despite his renown, reliable information concerning Moses' life is scarce. There has even been speculation (not accepted by most scholars) that Moses was an Egyptian, since his name is of Egyptian, rather than Hebrew, origin. (It means "child" or "son," and occurs as part of the name of several famous
pharaohs.) The Old Testament stories concerning Moses can hardly be accepted at face value, since they involve a large number of miracles. The stories of the burning bush, or of Moses turning his staff into a serpent, for example, are basically miraculous in nature; and it does tax one's credulity, perhaps, to believe that Moses, who was already eighty years old at the time of the Exodus, still managed to lead the Hebrews in a forty-year trip through the desert. Surely, we would like to know exactly what the real Moses accomplished before his story was buried in an avalanche of legends.

14. EUCLID [ ± 300 B.C ]

Few persons on this list have earned such enduring fame as the great Greek geometer, Euclid. Although in their lifetimes such figures as Napoleon, Alexander the Great, and Martin Luther were much better known than Euclid, in the long run his fame will probably well outlast theirs.

Despite his reknown, almost none of the details of Euclid's life are known. We do know that he was active as a teacher in Alexandria, Egypt, in about 300 B.C. However, his dates of birth and death are uncertain, and we do not even know on which continent he was born, much less in which city. Although he wrote several other books, some of which survive, his place in history rests primarily upon his great textbook of geometry, the Elements

The importance of the Elements does not lie in any one of the ( individual theorems it demonstrates. Almost all of the theorems ir the book had been known before Euclid, and a good many of the proofs as well. Euclid's great contribution was his arrangement o the material, and his formulation of the overall plan of the book This involved, in the first place, the selection of a suitable set oaxioms and postulates. (This was a very difficult task, requiring extraordinary judgment and great insight.) He then carefully arranged the theorems so that each followed logically from its predecessors. Where necessary, he supplied missing steps and developed missing proofs. It is worth noting that the Elements, while primarily a development of plane and solid geometry, also contains large sections on algebra and number theory.

The Elements has been used as a textbook for more than two thousand years, and is unquestionably the most successful textbook ever written. So superbly did Euclid do his work, that with the appearance of his book all prior geometry textbooks were superseded and promptly forgotten. Originally written in Greek, the Elements has since been translated into many other languages. The first printed edition appeared as early as 1482, only about thirty tears after Gutenberg's invention of printing. Since then, over a thousand different editions have been published.

13. ARISTOTELES 384 B.C-322 B.C

Aristotle was the greatest philosopher and scientist of the ancient world. He originated the study of formal logic, enriched almost every branch of philosophy, and made numerous contributions to science.

Many of Aristotle's ideas are outmoded today. But far more important than any of his individual theories is the rational approach underlying his work. Implicit in Aristotle's writings is the attitude that every aspect of human life and society may be an appropriate object of thought and analysis; the notion that the universe is not controlled by blind chance, by magic, or by the whims of capricious deities, but that its behavior is subject to rational laws; the belief that it is worthwhile for human beings to conduct a systematic inquiry into every aspect of the natural world; and the conviction that we should utilize both empirical observations and logical reasoning in forming our conclusions. This set of attitudes@which is contrary to traditionalism, superstition, and mysticism@has profoundly influenced Western civilization.

Aristotle was born in 384 B.C., in the town of Stagira, in Macedonia. His father was a prominent physician. At seventeen,Aristotle went to Athens to study in the Academy of Plato. He re mained there for twenty years, until shortly after Plato died. From his father, Aristotle may have gained an interest in biology and in "practical science"; under Plato he cultivated an interest in philosophical speculation.

12. GALILEO GALILEI 1564-1642

Galileo Galilei, the great Italian scientist who was probably more responsible for the development of the scientific method than any other individual, was born in 1564, in the city of Pisa. As a young man, he studied at the University of Pisa, but dropped out for financial reasons. Nevertheless, he was able, in 1589, to obtain a teaching position at that university. A few years later, he joined the faculty of the University of Padua and remained there until 1610. It was during this period that the bulk of his scientific discoveries were made.
Galileo's first important contributions were made in mechanics. Aristotle had taught that heavy objects fall at a more rapid rate than light objects, and generations of scholars had accepted this assertion on the Greek philosopher's authority. Galileo, however, decided to test it, and through a series of experiments, he soon found that Aristotle had been incorrect. The fact is that heavy and light objects fall at the same velocity except to the extent that they are retarded by the friction of the air. (Incidently, the tradition that Galileo performed these experiments by dropping objects from the Leaning Tower of Pisa seems to be without foundation.)
Having learned this, Galileo took the next step. He carefully measured the distance that objects fall in a given period of time and found that the distance traversed by a falling object is proportional to the square of the number of seconds it has been falling. This discovery (which implies a uniform rate of acceleration) is significant in itself. Even more important, Galileo was able to summarize the results of a series of experiments by a mathematical formula. The extensive use of mathematical formulas and mathematical methods is an important characteristic of modern science.

11. LOUIS PASTEUR 1822-1895

The French chemist and biologist Louis Pasteur is generally acknowledged to be the most important single figure in the history of medicine. Pasteur made many contributions to science, but he is most famous for his advocacy of the germ theory of disease and for his development of the technique of preventive inoculation.

Pasteur was born in 1822, in the town of Dole, in eastern France. As a college student in Paris, he studied science. His genius was not evident during his student days; in fact, one of his professors recorded him as "mediocre" in chemistry. However, after receiving his doctorate in 1847, Pasteur soon showed that his professor's judgment had been in error. His research on the mirror-image isomers of tartaric acid made Pasteur a renowned chemist when he was only twenty-six years old.

He then turned his attention to the study of fermentation, and showed that that process is due to the action of certain types of microorganisms. He also demonstrated that the presence of certain other species of microorganisms could produce undesirable products in the fermenting beverages. This soon led

him to the idea that some species of microorganisms could produce undesirable products and effects in human beings and other animals.

10 ALBERT EINSTEIN 1879-1955

Albert Einstein, the greatest scientist of the twentieth century and one of the supreme intellects of all time, is best known for his theory of relativity. There are actually two theories involved: the special theory of relativity, formulated in 1905, and the general theory of relativity, formulated in 1915, which might better be called Einstein's law of gravitation. Both theories are highly complicated, and no attempt will be made to explain them here however, a few comments on special relativity are in order.
A familiar maxim has it that "everything is relative." Einstein's theory, however, is not a repetition of this philosophical platitude, but rather a precise mathematical statement of the way in which scientific measurements are relative. It is obvious that subjective perceptions of time and space depend on the
observer. Before Einstein, however, most people had always believed that behind these subjective impressions were real distances and an absolute time, which accurate instruments could measure objectively. Einstein's theory revolutionized scientific thought by denying the existence of any absolute time. The following example may illustrate just how radically his theory revised our ideas of time and space.

9. CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS 1451-1506

Columbus, by attempting to find a westward route from Europe to the Orient, inadvertently discovered the Americas, and thereby had a greater influence on world history than he could

possibly have anticipated. His discovery, which inaugurated the age of exploration and colonization in the New World, was one of the critical turning points in history. It opened to the people of Europe two new continents for the settlement of their expanding populations, and provided a source of mineral wealth and raw materials that altered the economy of Europe. His discovery led to the destruction of the civilizations of the American Indians. In the long run, it also led to the formation of a new set of nations in the western hemisphere, vastly different from the Indian nations which had once inhabited the region, and greatly affecting the nations of the Old World.

8. JOHANN GUTENBERG [ 1400-1468 ]

Johann Gutenberg is often called the inventor of printing. What he actually did was to develop the first method of utilizing movable type and the printing press in such a way that a large variety of written material could be printed with speed and accuracy.
No invention springs full-blown from the mind of a single man, and certainly printing did not. Seals and signet rings, which work on the same principle as block printing, had been used since ancient times. Block printing had been known in China many centuries before Gutenberg, and, in fact, a printed book dating from about 868 has been discovered there. The process was also known in the West before Gutenberg. Block printing makes possible the production of many copies of a given book. However, the process has one major drawback: since a completely new set of woodcuts or plates must be made for each
new book, it is impractical for producing a large variety of books.

7. TS'AI LUN [ ± 105 M ]

Ts'ai Lun, the inventor of paper, is a man whose name is probably unfamiliar to most readers. Considering the importance of his invention, the extent to which he has been ignored in the West is indeed surprising. There are major encyclopedias which do not have even brief articles on Ts'ai Lun, and his name is seldom mentioned in standard history textbooks. In view of the obvious importance of paper, this paucity of references to Ts'ai Lun may arouse suspicion that he is a purely apocryphal figure. Careful research, however, makes it absolutely clear that Ts'ai Lun was a real man, an official at the Chinese imperial court, who, in or about the year 105, presented Emperor Ho Ti with samples of paper. The Chinese account of Ts'ai Lun's invention (which appears in the official history of the Han dynasty) is entirely straightforward and believable, without the least hint of magic or legend about it. The Chinese have always credited Ts'ai Lun with the invention of paper, and his name is well known in China.

Not a great deal is known about Ts'ai Lun's life. Chinese records do mention that he was a eunuch. It is also recorded that the emperor was greatly pleased by Ts'ai Lun's invention, and that as a result Ts'ai Lun was promoted, received an aristocratic title, and became wealthy. Later on, however, he became in volved in palace intrigue, and this eventually led to his downfall. The Chinese records relate that upon his being disgraced, Ts'ai

Lun took a bath, dressed in his finest robes, and drank poison.

6. ST. PAUL [ 4 M - 64 M ]

The apostle Paul, who was a younger contemporary of Jesus, became the foremost proselytizer of the new religion of Christianity. His influence on Christian theology proved to be the most permanent and far-reaching of all Christian writers and thinkers.
Paul, also known as Saul, was born in Tarsus, a city in Cili-cia (in present-day Turkey), a few years into the Christian era. Although a Roman citizen, he was of Jewish birth, and in his youth he learned Hebrew and received a thorough Jewish education. He also learned the trade of tentmaking. As a young man, he went to Jerusalem to study under Rabbi Gamaliel, an eminent Jewish teacher. Though Paul was in Jerusalem at the same time as Jesus, it is doubtful whether the two men ever met.