Erdmessung eratosthenes biography

Home / Scientists & Inventors / Erdmessung eratosthenes biography



One of the important works of Eratosthenes was Platonicus which dealt with the mathematics which underlie Plato's philosophy. He sketched, quite accurately, the route of the Nile to Khartoum, showing the two Ethiopian tributaries. There are other possible sources of experimental error; in antiquity, angles could only be measured to within about a quarter of a degree, and overland distance measurements were even less reliable.

Pontaniana (N.S.)35(1986), 37-44.

  • A Muwaf and A N Philippou, An Arabic version of Eratosthenes writing on mean proportionals, J. Nay thou couldst, on these tablets, easily find a myriad of means, beginning from a small base. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1994. (Greek scholars knew that the earth was a a sphere).



    Other details of what Eratosthenes wrote in Platonicus are given by Theon of Smyrna. when the god proclaimed to the Delians through the oracle that, in order to get rid of a plague, they should construct an alter double that of the existing one, their craftsmen fell into great perplexity in their efforts to discover how a solid could be made the double of a similar solid; they therefore went to ask Plato about it, and he replied that the oracle meant, not that the god wanted an alter of double the size, but that he wished, in setting them the task, to shame the Greeks for their neglect of mathematics and their contempt of geometry. Eratosthenes erected a column at Alexandria with an epigram inscribed on it relating to his own mechanical solution to the problem of doubling the cube [4]:-

    If, good friend, thou mindest to obtain from any small cube a cube the double of it, and duly to change any solid figure into another, this is in thy power; thou canst find the measure of a fold, a pit, or the broad basin of a hollow well, by this method, that is, if thou thus catch between two rulers two means with their extreme ends converging.

    erdmessung eratosthenes biography

    In particular he described there the history of the problem of duplicating the cube (see Heath[4]):-

    ... He is remembered for his prime number sieve, the 'Sieve of Eratosthenes' which, in modified form, is still an important tool in number theory research. Assuming that Alexandria was due north of Syene he concluded that the distance from Alexandria to Syene must be 7.2/360 of the total circumference of the Earth.

    While serving as head librarian, Eratosthenes wrote a comprehensive treatise about the world, called Geography. ISBN 0802713513

  • Fraser, P M. Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Perhaps the most commonly held view is that the value 8311​ is due to Ptolemy and not to Eratosthenes. When all multiples in the top row have been crossed off, the table contains only prime numbers.
  • Possibly, the measurement of the distance from the Sun to the Earth, now called the astronomical unit and of the distance to the Moon (see below).
  • The measurement of the inclination of the ecliptic at 23.5 degrees, with an angle error of 7'.
  • A star catalogue containing 675 stars, which was not preserved.
  • A map of the route of the River Nile as far as Khartoum.
  • A map of the entire known world, from the British Isles to Ceylon, and from the Caspian Sea to Ethiopia.

    The first number following two that is not crossed off will be the next prime number, three. v Shkole(4)(1988), i.

  • J Dutka, Eratosthenes' measurement of the Earth reconsidered, Arch. ISBN 0316515264

    • External links

    All links retrieved February 13, 2024. A study of the Nile had been made by many scholars before Eratosthenes and they had attempted to explain the rather strange behaviour of the river, but most like Thales were quite wrong in their explanations.

    Geography also introduced the climatic concepts of torrid, temperate, and frigid zones. Rawlins argues that this is in error by 16' while other data which Eratosthenes used, from unknown sources, was considerably more accurate.