Seventh Short Biography
Born: c. 90 in Egypt
Died: c. 168 (at about age 78) in Alexandria, Egypt
Nationality: Greco-Roman
Famous For: Publishing The Amalgest
He can be described as a polymath because his studies ranged across an astonishing array of disciplines, from astronomy and geography, to mathematics, philosophy, literature and poetry.
Who is he?
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"The best indications place Ptolemy’s birth at about 90 A.D. in Alexandria, Egypt. He was known to be of Greco-Roman origin and a citizen of Rome, which ruled Egypt at the time. His first name, Claudius, is a marker of his Roman connection. He was either born into or granted Roman citizenship during the reign of the patrician family of Claudius. The Emperors Claudius and Nero ruled during the life of Ptolemy.
Ptolemy is most famous for his ground-breaking work The Almagest, which is a treatise on mathematics and astronomy. It described the structure of the heavens as it was understood at the time. In Ptolemy’s day that meant that the earth was the center of the universe, and that the sun and other planets revolved around the earth. Ptolemy’s “geocentric” system was accepted for some 1,400 years.
In the Ptolemaic system, the earth was not described as flat – as was the general belief – but as a sphere. Although the system was incorrect in that it was an earth-centered system in which the earth did not move, and the stars fixed, it nevertheless was highly useful for practical purposes, such as navigation and calculating astronomical events."