Aristarchus of Samos

Greek astronomer and mathematician

310 BCE to 230 BCE

Aristarchus, or more correctly Aristarchos (310 BCE – ca.

230 BCE), is a Greek astronomer and mathematician, born on the island of Samos, in Greece.

He presents the first known heliocentric model of the solar system, placing the Sun, not the Earth, at the center of the known universe.

He is influenced by the Pythagorean Philolaus of Croton, but, in contrast to Philolaus, he identifies the "central fire" with the Sun, and puts the other planets in their correct order of distance around the Sun.

His astronomical ideas were often rejected in favor of the geocentric theories of Aristotle and Ptolemy.

The heliocentric theory was successfully revived nearly 1800 years later by Copernicus, after which Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton gave the theoretical explanation based on laws of physics, namely Kepler's laws for the motion of planets and Newton's laws, on gravitational attraction and dynamics.

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