Greek astronomer and mathematician (c.310–c.230 BC)
He put the Sun at the center eighteen centuries before Copernicus did. The idea didn't take—Aristotle's Earth-centric cosmos won the argument for the next two thousand years—but Aristarchus had already worked it out: Earth orbiting, rotating, smaller than the star it circles.
Born in Samos around 310 BC, Aristarchus likely studied in Alexandria under Strato of Lampsacus. He built sundials, observed the summer solstice of 280 BC, and attempted to measure the sizes and distances of the Sun and Moon. His calculation that the Sun was seven times larger than Earth (wildly low, but still enormous by ancient standards) led him to a radical conclusion: something that massive belonged at the center. He took Philolaus's old idea of a central fire and recast it as the Sun, arranging the planets in their correct order around it and suspecting the stars were distant suns. The m…
Sourced, dated quotes from Aristarchus of Samos
[Hypotheses]1. That the Moon receives its light from the sun.2. That the earth is in the relation of a point and centre to the sphere in which the moon moves.3.
We are now in a position to prove the following propositions : —1.
Proposition 2. If a sphere be illuminated by a sphere greater than itself, the illuminated portion of the former sphere will be greater than a hemisphere.
Proposition 3. The circle in the moon which divides the dark and the bright portions is least when the cone comprehending both the sun and the moon has its vertex at our eye.
Proposition 4. The circle which divides the dark and the bright portions in the moon is not perceptibly different from a great circle in the moon.
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