Thanks for the opportunity!

JDN mostly wrote for academic audiences, but he was a regular contributor to @thetls.bsky.social & his reviews there are often worth reading. His "God's Clockmaker" is great.

Enjoy The Big Hop! I certainly did.

Thanks!

Ah but that's because my co-author is called James Wade! Confusing, I know...

An actual (excellent) book

So it's possible he left the family behind in Basra when he went to Egypt...?

Ah thanks!

Oh I'm not making any claim at all. I'm just saying that if we have a problem with him both having a son-in-law & living an ascetic lifestyle later in life, that may be our problem, not his

Yeah that might be a caricature... but it's always hard to judge what sort of character & relationships anyone might have had 1000 years ago, especially when (like almost everyone) we really know rather little about him. What's to stop an Erdös having a wife & children in 10th-century Basra?

Just found them on my hard drive! I knew I'd gotten them from somewhere...

FWIW, here's Sabra's article in the DSB.

Of course even if we assume he was a loyal husband & father, lots of things could have happened that meant he didn't have a wife/daughter by his later life...

Ah yes, there he is!

I'm sure you're right. I only had time to photograph the pages, not actually read them carefully!

Where do you get the son-in-law info from? I have to admit I've not heard that before.

Since I was passing my departmental library with a few mins to spare, here are some pages from Sabra's 1989 edition of the Optics

Or Nader el-Bizri