Ibn al-Haytham was born around 965 in Basra, in present-day Iraq, and became an influential scholar of mathematics, astronomy, and optics. In Europe his name was often written as Alhazen. He studied how light travels and how human vision works.
His Book of Optics described experiments with light, reflection, lenses, and dark rooms. Ibn al-Haytham argued that vision happens when light enters the eye, rather than because the eye sends out rays. His careful use of observation and testing made his work important in the development of experimental science.
This Ibn al-Haytham coloring page shows the scholar with a large lens, lamp, blank book, and simple light demonstration. Print it for science history, optics lessons, biography projects, or online coloring. The picture offers children a welcoming introduction to a thinker whose experiments connected mathematics with the behavior of light.
A simple classroom extension is to observe a beam of light, reflections in a mirror, or the image made by a pinhole camera under adult supervision. These activities connect the historical portrait with direct observation, the same habit of testing ideas that made Ibn al-Haytham’s work so influential.
