Gerard of Cremona
was a prolific Arabic translator whose Latin translations in the sciences introduced the advanced Greek and Arab world to an intellectually impoverished Europe during the Middle Ages. Over a period of forty years, Gherard translated about eighty works from Arabic to Latin. Some of these translations were of Arabic works while others were of Greek works which had been translated into Arabic. Most famous of these was Ptolemy's Almagest, for which no Latin translations existed at the time.