Muslim Scientist? you must be mad!

Back in my highschool freshmen year, my chemistry teacher once said "so ya, you got all these laws by those frenchies and the italians and the dutch and the glorious brits" (he was a brit) "but do you know who they stole all their stuff from?"
kids shouted "The greeks!" "The romans!" "Africans!" "Persians!" "Indians!"
"nooo you stupid lot you, the Arabs!"

as I grew up and I understood more, I think a more accurate word should have been "Muslims!". That is due to the fact that a lot of medieval scientists in question weren't Arabs but Muslims, from Persia or all the other places that Islam spread to.
Anyways, here I will try to give a brief synopsis of what early Muslim scientists contributed to the world. A history that has been unfortunately forgotten.

Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī
Consequently he is considered to be the father of algebra,a title he shares with Diophantus. Latin translations of his Arithmetic, on the Indian numerals, introduced the decimal positional number system to the Western world in the 12th century. He revised and updated Ptolemy's Geography as well as writing several works on astronomy and astrology. 

Avicenna

 Avicenna was a Persian polymath and the foremost physician and Islamic philosopher of his time. He was also an astronomer, chemist, Hafiz, logician, mathematician, physicist, poet, psychologist, scientist, Sheikh, soldier, statesman and theologian. 
His most famous works are The Book of Healing, a vast philosophical and scientific encyclopaedia, and The Canon of Medicine, which was a standard medical text at many Islamic and European universities up until the early 19th century . Ibn Sīnā is regarded as a father of early modern medicine, and clinical pharmacology particularly for his introduction of systematic experimentation and quantification into the study of physiology,] his discovery of the contagious nature of infectious diseases, the introduction of quarantine to limit the spread of contagious diseases, the introduction of experimental medicine, evidence-based medicine, clinical trials, randomized controlled trials, efficacy tests, clinical pharmacology, neuropsychiatry, risk factor analysis, and the idea of a syndrome, and the importance of dietetics and the influence of climate and environment on health. He is also considered the father of the fundamental concept of momentum in physics, and regarded as a pioneer of aromatherapy.

Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Kathīr al-Farghānī
 He was involved in the measurement of the diameter of the Earth together with a team of scientists under the patronage of al-Ma'mūn in Baghdad. The Alfraganus crater on the Moon was named after him.

Muhammad ibn Zakarīya Rāzi
 Razi made fundamental and enduring contributions to the fields of medicine, alchemy, and philosophy, recorded in over 184 books and articles in various fields of science. He was well-versed in Persian, Greek and Indian medical knowledge and made numerous advances in medicine through own observations and discoveries. He was an early proponent of experimental medicine and is considered the father of pediatrics. He was also a pioneer of neurosurgery and ophthalmology. 

Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī
physicist, an anthropologist and psychologist, an astronomer, a chemist, a critic of alchemy and astrology, an encyclopedist and historian, a geographer and traveller, a geodesist and geologist, a mathematician, a pharmacist and physician, an Islamic philosopher and Shia theologian, and a scholar and teacher, and he contributed greatly to all of these fields.
He was the first scholar to study India and the Brahminical tradition, and has been described as the father of Indology, the father of geodesy, and "the first anthropologist". He was also one of the earliest leading exponents of the experimental scientific method, and was responsible for introducing the experimental method into mechanics, the first to conduct elaborate experiments related to astronomical phenomena, and a pioneer of experimental psychology.
George Sarton, the father of the history of science, described Biruni as "One of the very greatest scientists of Islam, and, all considered, one of the greatest of all times. 

Ibn al-Haytham
 He made significant contributions to the principles of optics, as well as to anatomy, astronomy, engineering, mathematics, medicine, ophthalmology, philosophy, physics, psychology, visual perception, and to science in general with his introduction of the scientific method.
Ibn al-Haytham is regarded as the "father of modern optics" for his influential Book of Optics, which correctly explained and proved the modern intromission theory of vision, and for his experiments on optics, including experiments on lenses, mirrors, refraction, reflection, and the dispersion of light into its constituent colours. He studied binocular vision and the moon illusion, described the finite speed and rectilinear propagation of light and and argued that rays of light are streams of corpuscular energy particles travelling in straight lines. Due to his formulation of a modern quantitative, empirical and experimental approach to physics and science, he is considered the pioneer of the modern scientific method and the originator of experimental science and experimental physics, and some have described him as the "first scientist" for these reasons.
He is also considered by some to be the founder of experimental psychology for his experimental approach to the psychology of visual perception and optical illusions, and a pioneer of the philosophical field of phenomenology.
Among his other achievements, Ibn al-Haytham gave the first clear description and correct analysis of the camera obscura, discovered Fermat's principle of least time and the concept of inertia (Newton's first law of motion), discovered that the heavenly bodies were accountable to the laws of physics, presented a critique and reform of Ptolemaic astronomy, first stated Wilson's theorem in number theory, formulated and solved Alhazen's problem geometrically using early ideas related to calculus and mathematical induction,and in his optical research laid the foundations for the later development of telescopic astronomy,as well as for the microscope and the use of optical aids in Renaissance art. 

Al-Kindi
also known by the Latinized version of his name Alkindus to the West, was an Arabpolymath: a philosopher, scientist, astrologer, astronomer, cosmologist, chemist, logician, mathematician, musician, physician, physicist, psychologist, and meteorologist.
In the field of mathematics, al-Kindi played an important role in introducing Indian numerals to the Islamic and Christian world. He was a pioneer in cryptanalysis and cryptology, and devised several new methods of breaking ciphers, including the frequency analysis method.] Using his mathematical and medical expertise, he was able to develop a scale that would allow doctors to quantify the potency of their medication. 

Ibn Sahl
Abu Sa`d al-`Ala' ibn Sahl was an Arabian mathematician, physicist and optics engineer associated with the Abbasid court of Baghdad. About 984 he wrote a treatise On Burning Mirrors and Lenses in which he set out his understanding of how curved mirrors and lenses bend and focus light. Ibn Sahl is credited with first discovering the law of refraction, usually called Snell's law. He used the law of refraction to work out the shapes of lenses that focus light with no geometric aberrations, known as anaclastic lenses. 

Well there you go, just a handful of early Muslim scientists and their achievements. These are few of hundreds of scientists that are too numerous to mention. وفقنا الله

NB: Despite my confidence in what I just posted, if there is ANY information here that you consider incorrect, please let me know and I will double check! (We're always learning history)