Ya'qub `Abu Yusuf' ibn Ishaq al-Kindi (803-873)
Al-Kindi, a philosopher, and chemist and a prized member of the House of Wisdom in Baghdad was born in Kufa, Iraq. Considered to be one of the 12 great minds in history, he pioneered the field of pharmacology and applied chemistry, introducing the concept of drug formulary. He also invented decryption and musical theory.
Al-Kindi wrote on diverse philosophical subjects, physics, optics, astronomy, music, psychology, medicine, chemistry, and more. He invented pharmaceutical methods, perfumes, and distilling of alcohol. In mathematics, he popularized the use of the decimal system, developed spherical geometry, wrote on many other topics and was a pioneer of cryptography (code-breaking).
