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I couldn't find my flash drive and my laptop isn't hooked up to a printer. XDThis is just a Mathematician assignment in my Mathematical Thought and Reason class.Eratosthenes was the first to almost accurately determine the circumference of the earth.
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Eratosthenes, Alexandria Egypt, 276 – 194 BCE.Dorian Hoppie
Math 124 Section 1311.20.09
The time that Eratosthenes grew up in was one of chaos. Over half a century
earlier, the man who had single handedly conquered most of Europe, Asia Minor, and
Egypt, and made it look like a piece of cake, had died of heavy drinking and a fever in
Babylon before appointing himself a successor. Alexander’s commanders made the best
of the situation. Ptolemy, and later his long descending family of Ptolemy’s, received
Egypt, and all were under the command of Perdikkas. Eratosthenes was born two years
before the first Syrian war, the first of six wars that wouldn’t end until the middle of the
next century. It is thought that he was born to a humble family, his mother’s name is
unknown, his father has two possible names that are documented, Aglaos or Ambrosios.
Humble, though they may have been, they had to be able to afford an education
for their son, not to mention that according to the Cyrene Constitution, a man had to own
land worth at least twenty minas, and he had to be born to free parents. Scholars blame
Eratosthenes’ childhood for the lack of information, but also the conflict surrounding his
life. Wars and battles burned libraries and official documents, texts that recounted history
in a much more detailed fashion (Nicastro. 61). Young Eratosthenes moved from Cyrene
to Athens for a time, studying under men such as the scholar Lysanias, the philosopher
Ariston, and the poet Callimachus. The great School of Athens, founded by Aristotle had
attracted many scholars and free thinkers from everywhere. Eratosthenes was considered
a Polymath, meaning he was an expert in literary criticism, poetry, geography, and
mathematics. He was criticized for rarely ever accomplishing much, however, and gained
himself the nickname Beta which was the second letter in the Greek Alphabet. After a
time as the writer and mathematician, Eratosthenes moved to Alexandria at the request of
Egypt’s Satrap, Ptolemy II.
While traveling back and forth between Syene and Alexandria, Eratosthenes
noticed on the summer solstice in Syene, that the sun was at the zenith and reach
perpendicularly down into a well, reflecting brilliantly off of the water at the bottom. He
reasoned that the sun is so far away that its rays could be thought of as parallel, and that
they should cast the same angle of light across the Earth’s surface all over. Eratosthenes
traveled back to Alexandria and noted that the shadow cast across the ground at the same
time had a 7º difference. Using that, and the distance between Syene and Alexandria in
stades. He measured the circumference of the Earth, which was only off by 10% from the
modern day circumference. Longitudes and latitudes were also a thing of his time.
His discoveries were welcomed by the age of chaos. Rulers, Generals and
warlords sent their men out to remap territories. The newer more current geography
helped warring cities to gain knew knowledge of bordering lands, giving them
advantages against each other.
Eratosthenes is also accredited with coming up with an algorithm for finding the
prime numbers, which are still being found today. The sieve method was efficient for
smaller primes, although quite tedious The method crossed off primes of smaller obvious
numbers, which made the hunt easier.
He was said to be a conceited individual, arrogant and short sighted in the works
of others and ended his life by starving himself, after having gone blind. Eratosthenes
may have been a joke in his early years, but his studies were the beginnings of many
other great things.