Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib (Arabic: علي بن أﺑﻲ طالب, Transliteration: ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, [ʕaliː ibn ʔæbiː t̪ˤɑːlib]; 13^thRajab, 24 BH–21^stRamaḍān, 40 AH; approximately October 23, 598 or 600 or March 17, 599 – January 27, 661). The son of Abu Talib, Ali was also the cousin and son-in-law of Islamic prophet Muhammad, ruling over the Islamic Caliphate from 656 to 661, and was the first male convert to Islam.Sunnis consider Ali the fourth and final of the Rashidun (rightly guided Caliphs), while Shias regard Ali as the first Imam and consider him and his descendants the rightful successors to Muhammad, all of which are members of the Ahl al-Bayt, the household of Muhammad. This disagreement split the Ummah (Muslim community) into the Sunni and Shia branches.

Muslim sources, especially Shia ones, state that since Muhammad's time, Ali was the only person born in the Kaaba sanctuary in Mecca, the holiest place in Islam. His father was Abu Talib and his mother was Fatima bint Asad, but he was raised in the household of Muhammad, who himself was raised by Abu Talib, Muhammad's uncle, and Ali's father. When Muhammad reported receiving a divine revelation, Ali was the first male to accept his message, dedicating his life to the cause of Islam.

Javan (Hebrew יָוָן, Standard Hebrew Yavan, Tiberian Hebrew Yāwān) was the fourth son of Noah's son Japheth according to the "Table of Nations" (Genesis chapter 10) in the Hebrew Bible. Flavius Josephus states the traditional view that this individual was the ancestor of the Greek people.

Also serving as the Hebrew name for Greece or Greeks in general, Yavan or (Tiberian) Yāwān (יָוָן) is probably cognate with the name of the eastern Greeks, the Ionians (Greek Iōnes, earlier Ιαϝονες Iawones). The Greek race has been known by cognate names throughout the Eastern Mediterranean and beyond—even in Sanskrit (yavana). In Greek mythology, the eponymous forefather of the Ionians is similarly called Ion, a son of Apollo.

Javan is also found in apocalyptic literature in the Book of Daniel, 8:21-22 and 11:2, in reference to the King of Greece (יון)—most commonly interpreted as a reference to Alexander the Great.

While Javan is generally associated with the ancient Greeks and Greece (cf. Gen. 10:2, Dan. 8:21, Zech. 9:13, etc.), his sons (as listed in Genesis 10) are usually associated with locations in the Northeastern Mediterranean Sea and Anatolia: Elishah (modern Cyprus), Tarshish (modern southern Turkey), Kittim (modern Cyprus), and Dodanim (alt. 1 Chron. 1:7 'Rodanim,' the island of Rhodes, west of modern Turkey between Cyprus and the mainland of Greece).

Ali Mortimer Javan (Persian: علی جوان‎ - ‘Ali Javān, Azerbaijani: علی جوان, born December 26, 1926) is an Iranian American physicist and inventor at MIT. His main contributions to science have been in the fields of quantum physics and spectroscopy. He co-invented the gas laser in 1960, with William R. Bennett. Ali Javan has been ranked Number 12 on the list of the Top 100 living geniuses.

Ali Javan was born in Tehran to Iranian Azeri parents from Tabriz. He graduated from Alborz High School, started his university studies at University of Tehran and came to the United States in 1948 right after the war. He received his PhD in physics in 1954 from Columbia University under his thesis advisor Charles Townes. In 1955 Javan held a position as a Post Doctoral in the Radiation Laboratory and worked with Townes on the atomic clock research, and used the microwave atom beam spectrometer to study the hyperfine structure of atoms like copper and thalium.

In 1957 he published a paper on how to induce gain and amplification effect resonantly in a three-level system without inducing inversion in the energy states. Following this body of work in the three-level maser systems, he discovered how it is possible to obtain gain and amplification effect in the Raman transitions without inversion. He joined Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1958 shortly after he conceived the working principle of his gas discharge Helium Neon laser device and predicted its significance.