Avicenna
Avicenna was born in Afshana, a village near Bukhara (in present-day Uzbekistan), the capital of the Samanids, a Persian dynasty in Central Asia and Greater Khorasan. His mother, named Sitāra, was from Bukhara; his father, Abdullāh, was a respected Ismaili scholar from Balkh, an important town of the Samanid Empire, in what is today Balkh Province, Afghanistan. His father worked in the government of Samanid in the village Kharmasain, a Sunni regional power. After five years, his younger brother, Mahmoud, was born. Avicenna first began to learn the Quran and literature in such a way that when he was ten years old he had essentially learned all of them.
Margherita Ancona
Margherita Ancona was born, as a twin with her sister Luisa, on 3 September 1881 in Palermo, on the island of Sicily in the Kingdom of Italy to Maria (née Basevi) and Camillo Ancona. Her family were of Jewish heritage. After attending gymnasium studying the classics in Messina in 1901, the twins relocated to Milan to further their education and became some of the first women graduates in Italy. Luisa was the second woman to enter university studies in Italy, behind Maria Montessori, and would become an eye doctor.