Aristarchus of Samos
| Aristarchus of Samos | |
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Statue of Aristarchos of Samos at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
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| Born | c. 310 BC |
| Died | c. 230 BC (age c. 80) |
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Aristarchus of Samos (/ˌærəˈstɑːrkəs/; Greek: Ἀρίσταρχος ὁ Σάμιος, Aristarkhos ho Samios; c. 310 – c. 230 BC) was an ancient Greek astronomer and mathematician who presented the first known model that placed the Sun at the center of the known universe with the Earth revolving around it (see Solar system). He was influenced by Philolaus of Croton, but he identified the "central fire" with the Sun, and put the other planets in their correct order of distance around the Sun. Like Anaxagoras before him, he suspected that the stars were just other bodies like the Sun, albeit further away from Earth. His astronomical ideas were often rejected in favor of the geocentric theories of Aristotle and Ptolemy, which are now known to be incorrect. Nicolaus Copernicus had attributed the heliocentric theory to Aristarchus.
Though the original text has been lost, a reference in Archimedes' book The Sand Reckoner (Archimedis Syracusani Arenarius & Dimensio Circuli) describes a work by Aristarchus in which he advanced the heliocentric model as an alternative hypothesis to geocentrism. Thomas Heath gives the following English translation of Archimedes' text:
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