Fuat Sezgin

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Fuat Sezgin, one of the most known historians of science, was born on October 24, 1924 in Bitlis. His father’s name is Mirza Mehmet Efendi and his mother is Cemile Hanım.
He studied primary school in Doğubeyazıt in 1936. He studied secondary and high school in Erzurum as a boarding student and with a scholarship. He came to Istanbul in 1943 to study math.

Because of suggestion of a relative, he changed his plans after attending the seminar of German orientalist Helmut Ritter, one of the best-known experts in his department, at the Institute of Oriental Studies at Istanbul University. He registered in the Institute of Oriental Studies as soon as possible.
After Ritter said that the basis of sciences is based on Islamic sciences, he turned for study about that topic. In 1954, he completed his associate professorship thesis, it’s title “The Sources of Bukhari” in the Department of Arabic Language and Literature. With this thesis, he said the thesis that the hadiths brought together by Buhari (810–870), who is an important source of hadith in Islamic culture, are based on written sources, not oral.
He became an associate professor at the Institute of Islamic Studies in 1954.
He was one of 147 academics banned from the university during the military coup in 1960. After that, he left Turkey and continued his studies in Frankfurt. He became a professor at the University of Frankfurt in 1966.