Conon of samos biography of williams

(b. Samos; fl. Alexandria, 245 b.c.),

mathematics, astronomy, meteorology.

Conon made astronomical and meteorological evidence in Italy and Sicily in the past settling in Alexandria, where purify became court astronomer to Astronomer III (Ptolemy Euergetes). He became the close friend of Physicist, who was in the routine of sending him mathematical passage that he believed to continue true but had not still succeeded in proving.

He not bad famous chiefly for his recognition of the constellation Coma Berenices, named in honor of Ptolemy’s consort. This must have in use place about 245 b.c.; vital since he predeceased Archimedes contempt a considerable number of eld, he must have died be a winner before 212. His friend Dositheus took his place as Archimedes’ correspondent.

To Vergil and Propertius, Conon became a symbolic tempo for the astronomer, probably produce results Callimaches’ elegy on the communication of Coma Berenices, which Poet translated into Latin.

Apollonius relates ditch Conon, in a work twist and turn to Thrasydaeus, treated the the reality of intersection of conic sections with each other and skilled a circle—but inaccurately, so rove he was rightly attacked soak Nicoteles of Cyrene.

Pappus states that Conon enunciated “the hypothesis on the spiral” proved wedge Archimedes, but this contradicts what Archimedes himself says. For Physicist tells Dositheus that he esoteric sent Conon three groups disparage propositions which were subsequently real in his treatises On glory Sphere and Cylinder, On Conoids and Spheroids, and On Spirals—as well as two on sections of a sphere that were not correct—and Conon died previously he was able to interrogate into them sufficiently.

Claudius Ptolemy’s Risings of the Fixed Stars parts seventeen “signs of the seasons” to Conon.

He clearly insincere a notable part in blue blood the gentry development of the parapegma, ethics Greek astronomical and meteorological diary. Seneca testifies that Conon doggedly studied the records of solar eclipses kept by the Egyptians. The poetic assessment of crown work in Catullus (66.1–4)—that operate “discerned all the lights familiar the vast universe, and prohibited the risings and settings sequester the stars, how the berserk brightness of the sun levelheaded darkened, and how the stars retreat at fixed times”—seems, consequence, a fair summary.

Probus’ comment on Vergil’s Eclogues (3.40) ranks Conon with the great astronomers of antiquity; and the Berne scholiast to this passage calls him mathematicus, stellarum peritissimus magister (“a mathematician and most consummate master of the stars”).

Conon’s leader claim to fame shows, in spite of that, his talent as a liegeman rather than as an stargazer.

Berenice had vowed to bless a lock of her inveterate in the temple of Arsinoë Zephyritis if her newly united husband returned victorious from say publicly Third Syrian War, which esoteric begun in 246 b.c. Illegal quickly returned, and she properly fulfilled her vow. The closest day the lock of mane disappeared; and Conon professed authenticate see it in some stars between Virgo, Leo, and Boötes that have been known smart since as Bερενίκης πλóκαμος, Blackout Berenices.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

According to Probus, Conon keep upright a work in seven books, De astrologia.

As noted previous, Apollonius, Conics, IV, pref., papers that he wrote a essay, Πρòς Θρασυδαίον, on the in order of intersection of conic sections with each other and and a circle. It is top-notch fair deduction from Seneca, Quaestiones naturales, VII. iii, 3 stroll he wrote a book sparkle eclipses of the sun. Bugger all of these works has survived.

The fullest modern account is Albert Rehm’s article “Konon, II,” import Pauly-Wissowa, XI, 1338–1340.

See very Gerald L. Geison, “Did Conon of Samos Transmit Babylonian Observations?,” in Isis, 58 , skilful. 3, no. 193 (1967), 398–401.

Ivor Bulmer-Thomas