Among the ancient Greeks was a prominent figure Claudius Ptolemy.Interesting facts from the life of the scholar show his great mind and is capable of a wide variety of sciences.Astronomer, astrologer, mathematician, geographer.In addition to these sciences I studied music, he studied and worked on the vision of demography.
Who is Claudius Ptolemy?
about the life of the ancient Greek scholar knows virtually nothing.His biography remains a mystery to historians.Not found still no sources that have been mentioned by Ptolemy, interesting facts from the life of this man lost.
place and date of his birth, to any race he belonged, whether married, had children there - do not know anything about it.We only know that he lived around the 90s to 170 AD, became known after 130 AD, was a Roman citizen, a long time resident of Alexandria (in the period from 127 to 151 AD.), WhereHe engaged in astronomical observations.
lot of controversy among scientists is the question of to what race belonged to Ptolemy.Interesting facts from the life of a scientist to say that he was a descendant of the royal kind of the Ptolemies.However, this version does not have sufficient evidence.
Proceedings scientist survived the
To have survived many scientific works of the ancient Greeks.They have become a major source for historians studying his life.
"great assembly" or "Almagest" - the main work of the scientist.This monumental work of 13 books can be called an encyclopedia of ancient astronomy.Also, it has a chapter devoted to mathematics, namely, trigonometry.
"Optics" - 5 books, the pages of which are set out the theory of the nature of, the refraction of rays and visual deceptions, about the properties of light on flat and convex mirrors.It also describes the laws of reflection.
"The doctrine of harmony" - working in 3 books.Unfortunately, the script to this day never arrived.We can only be found with a reduced Arabic translation, from which the later "Harmonica" was translated into Latin.
"Four Books" - work on demography, which sets out the surveillance Ptalomeya of life expectancy, given the separation of categories of ages.
"Improvised table" - chronology of the reign of the Roman emperors, Macedonian, Persian, Babylonian and Assyrian kings from 747 BCEto the period of life of Claudius.This work has become very important for historians.Loyalty its data indirectly confirmed by other sources.
"Tetrabiblos" - a treatise devoted to astrology, describes the motion of celestial bodies, their influence on the weather and on the person.
"Geography" - a set of geographic information antiquity 8 books.
Lost works
Ptolemy was a great scientist.Interesting facts of his books have become the main source of astronomical knowledge until Copernicus.Unfortunately, some of his works were lost.
geometry - in this area has been written at least 2 works, traces of which were found.
works on mechanics also existed.According to the Byzantine encyclopedia of the 10th century, Ptolemy is the author of 3 books in this field of science.None of them until our time is not preserved.
Claudius Ptolemy: interesting facts from the life of
scientist compiled a table of chords, it was he who first used the division degrees into minutes and seconds.
described his laws of refraction of light is very close to modern scientific findings.
Claudius Ptolemy - the author of many reference books that were new at the time.He summed up the works of Hipparchus - the greatest astronomer of antiquity, was based on his observations of the star catalog.His writings on the geography is also possible to introduce specific reference, in which he summarized all available at the time of knowledge.
That Ptolemy invented astrolabon, which became the prototype of the ancient astrolabe - an instrument for measuring latitude.
Other interesting facts about Ptolemy - the first time he gives instructions on how to portray a world map on a sphere.Without a doubt, his work became the basis for the creation of the globe.
Many modern historians emphasize that Ptolemy can hardly be called a scientist.Of course, he made several important discoveries of their own, but most of his works - a clear and competent presentation of discoveries and observations of other scientists.He did a titanic work, collecting all the data together, analyzing and making their own amendments.Ptolemy himself never put his authorship under his writings.
