I want to learn about great scientists and philosophers from other countries

[Specter Von Baren]

I'm a big history fan and listen to a lot of audio books about a lot of historical events places and people. However most of the scientists and philosophers I know of to look into books about are those from America and Europe. But what about Africa, South America, Asia, and Australia?

Does anyone have any such people they could recommend me to look into? (I expect an addendum to my knowledge to be forthcoming in regards to Australia at least)

 

[CaitSeith]

Mario Jose Molina-Pasquel Henriquez - Mexico - discoverer of the Antarctic ozone hole.

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

You could look into the Middle East. Quite a few Arabs, Berbers and Persians made significant contributions to the sciences during the medieval period, especially in mathematics, astronomy and medicine. You could look into:

Ibn Battuta
Ibn Sina
Abu Rayhan Biruni
Ibn Rushd
Ibn Khaldun
Abu al-Qasim
Abu Nasr Al-Farabi
Abu Bakr Al-Razi
Thabit ibn Qurra
Jabir Ibn Haiyan
Ibn Ishaq Al-Kindi

And lastly, Muhammad ibn Musa Al-Khwarizmi. He's basically the guy whose works introduced Hindu-Arabic numerals and algebra into European maths.

 

[EvilRoy]

With respect to philosophers, an easy one to fire off is the Buddha (1). If you search specifically with reference to the life and philosophy you'll come across a lot of really good works discussing where he came from and the major aspects of his philosophy. Since he had such a massive effect on eastern philosophers that followed him, you'll also get plenty of lead ins to those guys as the things they took and ran with come up.

Otherwise, I would actually suggest you start in on a podcast like Philosophize This. All you get is cliff notes for the most part, and most of the philosophers are European, but there are a few great episodes on eastern philosophers which I would encourage you to listen to and use as a jumping off point into their work. Particularly Confusionism and Daoism include lists of thinkers of the era and are a solid introduction to the ideas - more than enough to let you decide if the topics are something you want to explore.

 

[Agema]

I'm a big history fan and listen to a lot of audio books about a lot of historical events places and people. However most of the scientists and philosophers I know of to look into books about are those from America and Europe. But what about Africa, South America, Asia, and Australia?

By Western norms, given the relatively low development of Africa and very small population of Australia, they don't tend to be great places to go to find lots of great philosophers and scientists. There's also plenty missing because much of the native cultural output of Africa, Australia and South America was damaged or destroyed by Europeans in the colonial period. Thus sometimes when you want to see the fruits of their cultures, you might need to look or think about them rather differently.