The discovery of America is bitterly contested, with vying claims on behalf of prehistoric peoples who crossed over Beringia or the Pacific Ocean, Norse seafarers who landed in Newfoundland around 1000 C.E., and the 15th century explorers Christopher Columbus and John Cabot. Biruni, who never laid eyes on any ocean, also deserves “to wear the crown of discovery,” averred S. Frederick Starr, chair of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C., at a conference on medieval Central Asia. “His tools were not wooden boats powered by sail and muscular oarsmen but an adroit combination of carefully controlled observation, meticulously assembled quantitative data, and rigorous logic.”

Science 20 June 2014:
Vol. 344 no. 6190 pp. 1331-1332
DOI: 10.1126/science.344.6190.1331