Born in 1946 in a small village close to the town of
Temerloh in Malaysia's east coast state of
Pahang, Osman Bakar attended his high school at
Malay College Kuala Kangsar. In September 1967, he left Malaysia on a scholarship to study
mathematics at the
University of London, graduating with a Bachelor's degree in June 1970. He then returned to Malaysia to become a teacher in the Mathematics Department of the
National University of Malaysia,
Kuala Lumpur. Few months later, Osman returned to
London to complete his postgraduate studies in
Algebra at
Bedford College, University of London. The next year, he earned a Master of Science degree. In the same year, Osman began his doctoral studies at the same college. However, he became very interested in
religion and
philosophy and began reading more books on
Islamic thought and
Western philosophy than algebra. He became particularly interested in the writings of the contemporary Iranian philosopher
Seyyed Hossein Nasr, and medieval Islamic scholar
Al-Ghazali. Eventually, he ended his doctoral studies in mathematics, returned to the National University of Malaysia in October 1973 and became a lecturer in the Mathematics Department. Osman went to
Temple University,
Philadelphia in October 1981 to pursue his doctoral studies in Islamic philosophy of science under the tutelage of Seyyed Hossein Nasr. He wrote his dissertation on Islamic philosophy of science which was later published as
Classification of Knowledge in Islam. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1989 after receiving his
PhD, and to Professor in 1992 as an expert in philosophy of science. From July to December 1992, he served as a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the Department of History of Science of
Harvard University where he conducted research on Mathematics in Muslim Culture. He was appointed the
University of Malaya’s Deputy Vice Chancellor in 1995. In June 2000, however, he resigned from his post to take up a new position at
Georgetown University,
Washington, D.C., as Malaysia Chair of Islam in Southeast Asia. ==Influence==