Autolycus of Pitane
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Autolycus of Pitane was born circa 360BC and died circa 290BC, but he played a very important role in his lifetime by bringing us many different ideas, and his works included many subjects, such as; astronomy, mathematics and geography. These works benefited our modern day society in many ways.
These include; the relation between the rising and the setting of the stars, in [[geometry] he experimented with the ways of a sphere, and last but not least, he wrote books on the movement of a sphere because of this he obviously didn’t think the world was flat.
Autolycus had a unknown life as not much is known about his family but his works were mostly completed in Athens, Greece in the timeframe of 35 years (335 – 300BC) it seems that Autolycus shared many of the same opinions as Eudoxus (408 – 355BC) as Eudoxus was another astronomer.
Autolycus was also known as ‘Autolykos aus Pitane’ which may have been his native Greek name, his correct title at the time was actually; ‘Autolykos aus Pitane, predecessor of Euclid.
Autolycus made several different books but only two have seemed to have survived well over 1,700 years and these two books are about; The Rotating Sphere and The Risings and Settings these books are written in Greek.
His first book about; The rotating sphere theorem which Autolycus of Pitane wrote. Was about the motion of a sphere doesn’t change it’s shape in no form at all, then he related this to earth and thought the globe is just simply rotating as the atmosphere stays the same, for example; the rotation starts of the east side of the atmosphere and at the end of the day the rotation ends up on the west side of the atmosphere. Therefore this would simply be day changing into night.
Another main point of his second book was; ‘any star which rises and sets always rises and sets at the same point in the horizon’ this helped our society in many ways as our questions were answered about many separate thoughts and ideas we may have come up with about astronomy but never answered ourselves.
A fact about Autolycus of Pitane’s books is it is believed that they were the earliest written mathematics related books which have actually survived.
Strangely enough, 200 years later, Theodosius wrote a book named; ‘Sphaerics’ a book which resembled Autolycus’s book on; On the moving sphere, but no one at that time thought that any of the astronomers were duplicating others books, unfortunately all of Theodosius’s books are lost and Euclid’s 4th book was never located.
Autolycus was a great help in our own society by explaining the rising and setting of stars and the movement of the sphere in great detail and many other Greek astronomers have benefited greatly from his 2 books, overall Autolycus is thought to be one of the most magnificent ancient Greek astronomer ever born.
External links
- John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson. [] at the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive.
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