Ibn Sina, known in the West as Avicenna, is one of the brightest stars in the sky of human civilization. Born in 980 near Bukhara, he showed signs of extraordinary intelligence from a very young age. By the age of 10, he had memorized the Holy Qur'an completely and had decided to dedicate his life to medicine — a field he would revolutionize.

Ibn Sina mastered medicine so quickly that he once said, "Medicine is not a difficult science." Before he turned 18, he had already achieved complete mastery of the medical knowledge of his time. His first mentor, Abu ʿAbdullah al-Naṭili, was a famous philosopher and logician who helped him build a strong foundation in philosophy and logic.

Despite reading Aristotle’s Metaphysics over 40 times, Ibn Sina initially struggled to understand it fully — a reminder that even the most brilliant minds need perseverance. Still, he firmly believed that every person is talented; one might excel in one area while struggling in another.

Whenever Ibn Sina faced difficulty in understanding something, he would go to the mosque, pray, and seek help from Allah. He slept very little and often sacrificed his nights for study.

Ibn Sina treated poor patients for free, seeing this not only as charity but also as an opportunity to gain more medical experience.

When the ruler of Bukhara under the Samanid dynasty fell gravely ill, Ibn Sina was summoned to the royal court. Successfully curing the ruler earned him access to the Samanid royal library — one of the largest in the Islamic world. This opened the doors to endless knowledge and freed him from financial worries, allowing him to fully dedicate his life to science and discovery.

Throughout his life, Ibn Sina wrote over 400 works, of which around 270 survive today. His fields of expertise ranged from philosophy (80 books) to medicine (40 books), as well as logic, music, ethics, chemistry, and literature. His most famous work, Al-Qanun fi al-Tibb (The Canon of Medicine), remained the standard medical text in both the Islamic world and Europe for over 700 years.

Today, a lot of work is being done in Uzbekistan to study the legacy of Ibn Sina. In particular, specialized schools named after Ibn Sina have been established in Uzbekistan with the aim of preparing students proficient in science. The legacy of Ibn Sina is being widely studied at the Academy of Uzbekistan.

Ibn Sina made groundbreaking discoveries: differentiating between plague and cholera; warning about contagious diseases and being one of the first to suggest that diseases spread through contaminated water and air, centuries before European scientists made similar "discoveries"; inventing a device for bone setting; and being among the first to develop gypsum casting techniques for fractures. Additionally, in surgery, he stressed the importance of sterilization and pain management. He also explained the cause of diabetes by analyzing patients' urine.

His interest wasn’t limited to medicine. Ibn Sina also developed theories about sound and light, noting that light travels faster than sound (a fact you can witness during thunderstorms).

Ibn Sina's philosophy of education was far ahead of his time. He believed that a child's talents must be identified early and that education should be customized — not forced in a rigid, one-size-fits-all system.

Ibn Sina conducted various experiments that helped him prove his theories. His Floating Man experiment is a famous idea in philosophy. He asked people to imagine a man created fully grown, floating in the air with no contact with anything — not even feeling his own body. Even though the man cannot see, hear, or touch anything, he would still know that he exists. Ibn Sina used this thought experiment to show that the soul is independent of the body. He believed that a person’s awareness of their own existence comes from the soul, not from the physical senses.

Another well-known experiment done by Ibn Sina demonstrates the power of fear and anxiety. He put two lambs in separate cages. Lambs were the same age and the same weight and fed with the same food. All conditions were equal. However, he put a wolf in the third cage. Only one lamb could see the wolf, but not the other lamb. Months later, the lamb who saw the wolf was cranky, restless, poorly developing, and losing weight. The lamb died while the other lamb remained healthy. Although the wolf did nothing to the lamb next to it, the fear and stress that lamb lived in killed it prematurely, while the other lamb that did not see the wolf was peaceful and developed well with a healthy weight gain. In this experiment, Ibn Sina demonstrated the importance of mental health.

Ibn Sina’s influence lives on, across continents and centuries. His life teaches us that intelligence, faith, hard work, and kindness are keys to leaving a legacy that never dies.