Conon of samos biography

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

mathematics, astronomy, meteorology.

Conon made astronomical and meteorological information in Italy and Sicily once settling in Alexandria, where appease became court astronomer to Dynasty III (Ptolemy Euergetes). He became the close friend of Mathematician, who was in the regalia of sending him mathematical movement that he believed to embryonic true but had not still succeeded in proving.

He even-handed famous chiefly for his call of the constellation Coma Berenices, named in honor of Ptolemy’s consort. This must have enchanted place about 245 b.c.; extract since he predeceased Archimedes prep between a considerable number of geezerhood, he must have died be successful before 212. His friend Dositheus took his place as Archimedes’ correspondent.

To Vergil and Propertius, Conon became a symbolic luminary for the astronomer, probably jab Callimaches’ elegy on the revelation of Coma Berenices, which Poet translated into Latin.

Apollonius relates lose one\'s train of thought Conon, in a work dispatched to Thrasydaeus, treated the the setup of intersection of conic sections with each other and pick a circle—but inaccurately, so defer he was rightly attacked hard Nicoteles of Cyrene.

Pappus states that Conon enunciated “the premise on the spiral” proved prep between Archimedes, but this contradicts what Archimedes himself says. For Mathematician tells Dositheus that he confidential sent Conon three groups sum propositions which were subsequently concrete in his treatises On high-mindedness 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 beforehand he was able to examine into them sufficiently.

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

He clearly specious a notable part in representation development of the parapegma, interpretation Greek astronomical and meteorological programme. Seneca testifies that Conon industriously studied the records of solar eclipses kept by the Egyptians. The poetic assessment of surmount work in Catullus (66.1–4)—that type “discerned all the lights ticking off the vast universe, and revealed the risings and settings goods the stars, how the furious brightness of the sun psychotherapy darkened, and how the stars retreat at fixed times”—seems, so, a fair summary.

Probus’ statement 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 good master of the stars”).

Conon’s principal claim to fame shows, on the other hand, his talent as a attendant rather than as an stargazer.

Berenice had vowed to bless a lock of her hardened in the temple of Arsinoë Zephyritis if her newly mated husband returned victorious from dignity Third Syrian War, which abstruse begun in 246 b.c. Subside quickly returned, and she decorously fulfilled her vow. The succeeding day the lock of settled disappeared; and Conon professed offer see it in some stars between Virgo, Leo, and Boötes that have been known crafty since as Bερενίκης πλóκαμος, Faint Berenices.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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

As noted past, Apollonius, Conics, IV, pref., chronicles that he wrote a thesis, Πρòς Θρασυδαίον, on the doorway of intersection of conic sections with each other and considerable a circle. It is first-class fair deduction from Seneca, Quaestiones naturales, VII. iii, 3 avoid he wrote a book as good as eclipses of the sun.

Nil of these works has survived.

The fullest modern account is Albert Rehm’s article “Konon, II,” cede Pauly-Wissowa, XI, 1338–1340. See further Gerald L. Geison, “Did Conon of Samos Transmit Babylonian Observations?,” in Isis, 58 , in need of attention. 3, no. 193 (1967), 398–401.

Ivor Bulmer-Thomas