April is known as Arab American Heritage Month, when the achievements of Arabs in the United States are celebrated annually.

In this article, History presented 5 important innovations by Arab researchers whose influence is still strong to this day: in the fields of media, communication, the Internet, computers, and surgery.

TV transmission and LCD screen

The credit for the development of television transmission and liquid crystal displays is attributed to the Arab researcher Hassan Kamel Al-Sabah, who was born in the Nabatiyeh region in southern Lebanon in 1895. He studied mathematics and then taught it at the American University of Beirut, before immigrating to the United States in 1921.

After a short stint at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Al-Sabah earned a master's degree in engineering from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Then he got a job at the General Electric Company's laboratory, in 1923, under a contract that stipulated that he be awarded one dollar for every patent he achieved.

During his tenure with the company, between 1927 and 1935, he applied for 52 patents.

The patents he obtained during the same period include: 3 innovations in television transmission technology, 2 on the cathode ray tube, which are screens containing an electronic valve used in radar and television equipment.

The researcher died in a car accident in 1935, and General Electric's engineers continued to rely on the technology he invented, including the development of the liquid crystal display (LCD).

It is noteworthy that Al-Sabah made many important contributions to science, technology and engineering, especially in the field of solar energy.

Egyptian researcher Rana Al-Qalyubi, developer of emotion recognition technology (French)

emotion recognition technology

Egyptian researcher Rana Al-Qalyubi is considered the developer of the emotion-recognition technology.

Her interest in this field began when she was completing her PhD research at the University of Cambridge in England, as she did not feel that she could truly communicate with her loved ones in Egypt.

She wished her computer could better convey her emotional state to her family and friends who are far from her.

So I decided to find a way to make technology that would be more emotionally intelligent.

After receiving her Ph.D., El Kalioby held a research position in the Affective Computing Group at MIT Media Lab.

She and her team have developed an "emotional hearing aid" as well as a pair of glasses that can read emotions in conjunction with social cues, known as "social emotional intelligence artificial limbs".

In 2006, with the help of a colleague, a researcher created wearable technology for people with autism who find it difficult to recognize and process the emotions of others while communicating.

El Kalioubi and her MIT colleague co-founded Affectiva, which uses deep learning, computer science, speech science and vast amounts of real-world data to develop emotion recognition technology.

The researcher was known for her pioneering technology that accurately reads subtle changes in facial expressions that convey emotion.

Arab-American researcher Anthony Fadel is credited with developing the iPod (French)

iPod and iPhone

Before 2001, portable MP3 players existed to let you listen to music outside the home, but none of them were popular enough to make the device effective in enabling people to listen to music on the go. Apple, the Arab-American researcher Anthony Fadel, put him in charge of a group of new private projects within the company tasked with doing just that.

The result was the iPod, launched in 2001. Fadel, now known as the "father of the iPod", went on to oversee the first 18 upgraded versions of the device before Jobs assigned him to his next task: making a mobile phone with the same multiple features as the iPod.

The end product this time was the iPhone, which enabled people to carry a very compact computer with internet access at all times.

This feature has changed the way people access information.

It is noteworthy that Fadel participated in the development of the first three generations of the iPhone.

Dr. Michael DeBakey performed the first open-heart surgery transmitted abroad by satellite in 1965 (French)

remote surgery

Born in Lake Charles, Louisiana in 1908 to Lebanese immigrant parents, Michael DeBakey grew up spending time in his father's pharmacy, enjoying sewing, gardening and learning how engines and other machines worked.

He received his medical degree in 1932, and served as a surgical consultant in the Army's Office of General Surgery from 1942 to 1946.

During this time, DeBakey and his colleagues developed special units to surgically care for wounded soldiers near the front lines.

They were best known for their work during the Korea-Vietnam conflict, and are now known as the Mobile Assistant Surgical Hospital (MASH) units.

DeBakey's contributions to surgery continued over the next several decades, and included the first successful removal of a carotid artery blockage in 1953, the development of the concept of coronary artery bypass surgery (a procedure that reroutes blood around the part of a partially or completely blocked artery in the heart in 1963), and the first demonstration of open-heart surgery It travels abroad via satellite in 1965, and was the first to use a partial artificial heart in 1966.

In the eighties, Egyptian researcher Taher El-Gamal began working in the field of Internet security (websites).

Internet Security

In the 1980s, Egyptian researcher Taher El-Gamal began working in the field of Internet security, although it was not as important as it is now in our minds.

“Al-Jamal published a 1984 paper on the discrete algorithm based encryption and digital signature system, which was used in the development of the Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA),” says Richard Gardner, software developer and CEO of Modulus.

Al Jamal's work became even more influential after it was adopted by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as the Digital Signature Standard (DSS).

"As the name suggests, it has become the standard for electronic signatures," Gardner explains.

According to Abd al-Rahman Henedy, an Arab American businessman and founder of Financeive, El-Gamal's invention of the discrete logarithm was a milestone in cryptography.

"His work has inspired other types of encryption and paved the way for the creation of more advanced algorithms, such as the Advanced Encryption Standard," he explains.

In addition, El Gamal was the developer of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), a protocol that keeps communications over the Internet such as e-mail and instant messages secure.

Because of this major technological breakthrough, the researcher became known as the "Father of SSL".