LYCOS RETRIEVER
Eratosthenes: History
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In addition to being a great questioner, Eratosthenes was a terrific list maker. He liked making lists. It was a good way to organize information so it could be shared with other people. He made a list of all the important dates in the history of Greece. […] He ... made a list of all the winners of the Olympic Games.
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[One] great achievement of Eratosthenes was his invention of the calendar that included leap years. Once he did this, he tried to make a comprehensive history of all major events which happened to his time since the siege of Troy.
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A brief discussion of Eratosthenes's life appears in Carl Boyer, A History of Mathematics (1968). Thomas L. Heath, A Manual of Greek Mathematics (1931), is a full treatment of Eratosthenes's mathematical research. See ... Ivor Thomas, Greek Mathematical Works, vol. 1 (1939).
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Eratosthenes ... made many other great contributions to science. He worked out a calendar that included leap years, and he laid the foundation for the chronological writing of history by giving dates of literary and political events from the time of the siege of Troy. He also made a star catalogue with 675 stars.
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The librarian was a Creek named Eratosthenes. A universal mind, he was a mathematician, a specialist in history, an astronomer, and a poet besides. And around 250 B.C. he did something almost incredible in those times. Eratosthenes measured accurately the girth of the planet he lived on!
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