Flourished from 160-125 B. C.

A native of Nicæa and lived at Rhodes. The Father of Astronomy and Geography. He first numbered and catalogued the stars; he discovered the precession of the equinoxes, and transferred latitude and longitude from heaven to earth, 140 B. C. He determined the revolutions and mean motions of the planets; invented the stereographical mode of projection and various instruments. He invented trigonometry, both plane and spherical. He deserves to be honored as the founder of geography and astronomy, and as a genius of the same order as Archimedes and Newton. His Commentary on the Phenomena of Aratus is extant.

He, who through vast immensity can pierce,
See worlds on worlds compose one universe,
Observe how system into system runs,
What other planets circle other suns,
What varied being peoples every star,
May tell why heaven has made us as we are.
But of this frame, the bearings and the ties,
The strong connexions, nice dependencies,
Gradations just, has thy pervading soul
Look’d through? Or, can a part contain the whole?
Is the great chain, that draws all to agree,
And draws support, upheld by God, or thee?

—Essay on Man: Pope

Skill’d in the globe and sphere, he gravely stands,
And, with his compass, measures seas and lands.

—Sixth Satire of Juvenal: Dryden