George Alfred Leon Sarton was a seminal Belgian-American polymath, historian of science, and father of the writer, May Sarton. He wrote the classical History of Science, The Study of the History of Science, and the five volume Introduction to the History of Science, which only reached from Homer to the end of the fourteenth century.

Sarton was convinced that the study of the History of science was the only truly progressive history. "Whatever material and intellectual progress there is can be traced back in each case to the discovery of some new secret of nature or to a deeper understanding of an old one."[1] He is credited with launching the formal study of the history of science in the United States as well as with creating the most noted academic journal in the subject, Isis.

Additional Quotation

"It will suffice here to evoke a few glorious names without contemporary equivalents in the West: Jabir ibn Haiyan, al-Kindi, al-Khwarizmi, al-Fargani, al-Razi, Thabit ibn Qurra, al-Battani, Hunain ibn Ishaq, al-Farabi, Ibrahim ibn Sinan, al-Masudi, al-Tabari, Abul Wafa, 'Ali ibn Abbas, Abul Qasim, Ibn al-Jazzar, al-Biruni, Ibn Sina, Ibn Yunus, al-Kashi, Ibn al-Haitham, 'Ali Ibn 'Isa al-Ghazali, al-zarqab, Omar Khayyam. A magnificent array of names which it would not be difficult to extend. If anyone tells you that the Middle Ages were scientifically sterile, just quote these men to him, all of whom flourished within a short period, 750 to 1100 A.D."