Eratosthenes
Greek mathematician, geographer, poet, astronomer, librarian and music theorist · Academics · Lived 276 BC to 194 BC · aged 82
Eratosthenes is read about 2,637 times a day, in 102 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 27 October 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 400 days, one point a day.
Something wrong?He measured the planet with a stick and some geometry - no satellites, no instruments beyond shadow and angle - and got Earth's circumference within a few hundred miles. That calculation, done in the third century BC, made him the first person to actually know the size of the world he stood on.
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, Eratosthenes... knew that the Sun was straight overhead in...
About this person
Eratosthenes of Cyrene was born around 276 BC and became chief librarian at the Library of Alexandria, the intellectual center of the ancient world. A polymath who worked across mathematics, astronomy, poetry, and music theory, he coined the term "geography" and built the first global map using parallels and meridians. He calculated Earth's axial tilt with startling precision, founded scientific chronology by dating the fall of Troy to 1184 BC using Egyptian and Persian records, and in number theory introduced the sieve of Eratosthenes for identifying primes. His admirers called him Pentathlos - the well-rounded competitor - but detractors tagged him Beta, always second-best in every field. He died around 195 BC, having spent a life measuring what others only guessed at.
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