Influences and Motivations in the Work of a Palestinian Artist/Inventor

The author sketches his development as an artist and inventor, specifically related to his Palestinian background. Early work on Arabic type design, on an instrument for stereoscopic drawing and on an instrument to aid perspective drawing is discussed and technically summarized. The artist’s watercolor paintings, which reflect his experiences of war, the loss of his homeland and life as an exile in Japan, are also discussed, as is his invention of a device to trace the position of the sun’s shadow and various optical devices. Finally, the author documents the development of a new theory to explain the diffraction of waves and a proposed method to cancel this effect.