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Eratosthenes of Cyrene (Greek Ἐρατοσθένης; 276 BCE - 194 BCE) was a Greek mathematician, poet, athlete, geographer and astronomer. He made several remarkable discoveries and inventions: he devised a system of latitude and longitude. He was the first person to calculate the circumference of the Earth (with remarkable accuracy), and the tilt of the earth's axis (again with remarkable accuracy); he may also have accurately calculated the distance from the earth to the sun. He calculated the length of the year as 365.25 days, and invented the leap day.[1] He also created a map of the world based on the available geographical knowledge of the era. Eratosthenes was also the founder of scientific chronology; he endeavored to fix the dates of the chief literary and political events from the conquest of Troy.
His contemporaries nicknamed him "beta" (the Greek numeral "two") because he supposedly proved himself to be the second best in many fields.citation needed
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Eratosthenes was born in Cyrene (in modern-day Libya). He was the chief librarian of the Great Library of Alexandria and died in the capital of Ptolemaic Egypt. He never married.
Eratosthenes studied in Alexandria and claimed to have also studied for some years in Athens. In 236 BC he was appointed by Ptolemy III Euergetes I as librarian of the Alexandrian library, succeeding the first librarian, Apollonius of Rhodes, in that post[2]. He made several important contributions to mathematics and science, and was a good friend to Archimedes. Around 255 BC he inventedcitation needed the armillary sphere, which was widely used until the invention of the orrery in the 18th century.
In 194 BC Eratosthenes became blind and, according to legends, a year later, he starved himself to death.
He is credited by Cleomedes in On the Circular Motions of the Celestial Bodies with having calculated the Earth's circumference around 240 BC, using knowledge of the angle of elevation of the Sun at noon on the summer solstice in Alexandria and in the Elephantine Island near Syene (now Aswan, Egypt).
Eratosthenes knew that on the summer solstice at local noon in the Ancient Egyptian city of Swenet (known in Greek as Syene) on the Tropic of Cancer, the sun would appear at the zenith, directly overhead. He also knew, from measurement, that in his hometown of Alexandria, the angle of elevation of the Sun would be 1/50 of a full circle (7°12') south of the zenith at the same time. Assuming that Alexandria was due north of Syene he concluded that the distance from Alexandria to Syene must be 1/50 of the total circumference of the Earth. His estimated distance between the cities was 5000 stadia (about 500 geographical or nautical miles). He rounded the result to a final value of 700 stadia per degree, which implies a circumference of 252,000 stadia. The exact size of the stadion he used is frequently argued. The common Attic stadion was about 185 m, which would imply a circumference of 46,620 km, i.e. 16.3% too large. However, if we assume that Eratosthenes used the "Egyptian stadion"[1] of about 157.5 m, his measurement turns out to be 39,690 km, an error of less than 1%.[2]
Although Eratosthenes' method was well founded, the accuracy of his calculation was inherently limited. The accuracy of Eratosthenes' measurement would have been reduced by the fact that Syene is slightly north of the Tropic of Cancer, is not directly south of Alexandria, and the Sun appears as a disk located at a finite distance from the Earth instead of as a point source of light at an infinite distance. There are other sources of experimental error: the greatest limitation to Eratosthenes' method was that, in antiquity, overland distance measurements were not reliable, especially for travel along the non-linear Nile which was traveled primarily by boat. So the accuracy of Eratosthenes' size of the earth is surprising.
Eratosthenes' experiment was highly regarded at the time, and his estimate of the Earth’s size was accepted for hundreds of years afterwards. His method was used by Posidonius about 150 years later.
Eusebius of Caesarea in his Preparatio Evangelica includes a brief chapter of three sentences on celestial distances (Book XV, Chapter 53). He states simply that Eratosthenes found the distance to the sun to be "σταδίων μυριάδας τετρακοσίας και οκτωκισμυρίας" (literally "of stadia myriads 400 and 80,000") and the distance to the moon to be 780,000 stadia. The expression for the distance to the sun has been translated either as 4,080,000 stadia (1903 translation by E. H. Gifford), or as 804,000,000 stadia (edition of Edouard des Places, dated 1974-1991). The meaning depends on whether Eusebius meant 400 myriad plus 80,000 or "400 and 80,000" myriad.
This testimony of Eusebius is dismissed by the scholarly Dictionary of Scientific Biography. It is true that the distance Eusebius quotes for the moon is much too low (about 144,000 km) and Eratosthenes should have been able to do much better than this since he knew the size of the Earth and Aristarchus of Samos had already foundcitation needed the ratio of the Moon's distance to the size of the Earth. But if what Eusebius wrote was pure fiction, then it is difficult to explain the fact that, using the Greek, or Olympic, stadium of 185 metres, the figure of 804 million stadia that he quotes for the distance to the Sun comes to 149 million kilometres. The difference between this and the modern accepted value is less than 1%.[3]
| Preceded by Apollonius of Rhodes |
Head of the Library of Alexandria | Succeeded by Aristophanes of Byzantium |
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| NAME | Eratosthenes |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Eratosthenes of Cyrene; Ἐρατοσθένης |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | Greek mathematician, poet, athlete, geographer and astronomer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 276 BCE |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Cyrene |
| DATE OF DEATH | 194 BCE |
| PLACE OF DEATH | |
