Aristarchus of Samos ranks as one of the greatest astronomers of Ancient Greece. We know nothing about his character or career, and we are not even certain of the dates of his birth and death; however, he was certainly an older contemporary of Archimedes, who has in fact left us the only real accounts of his most important discoveries.
Aristarchus made two significant contributions. First, he was one of the earliest to maintain that the Earth is in orbit round the Sun instead of lying in the centre of the universe. Secondly, he made a noble attempt to measure the relative sizes and distances of the Sun and Moon. His method was perfectly sound in theory, and gave poor results only because the necessary measurements could not be made with sufficient precision.
Just why Aristarchus concluded that the Earth is in orbit round the Sun is not entirely clear. Archimedes, in his Psammites or Sandreckoner, wrote as follows:
But Aristarchus of Samos brought out a book consisting of certain...
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Bibliography
Archimedes (ca. 250 BC) Psammites (Sand reckoner), chapter 1, 1–10.
Dreyer, J. L.E. (1953) A History of Astronomy from Thales to Kepler, New York: Dover Books, pp. 135–45. (Original edition Cambridge, 1906. The Dover reprint is unabridged.)
Heath, T. L. (1932) Greek Astronomy. London and Toronto: J.M. Dent.
Stahl, W. H. (1970) Aristarchus of Samos. Dict. Sci. Biogr., Vol. 1, pp. 246–50.
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Moore, P. (1997). Aristarchus (c. 310–230 bc). In: Encyclopedia of Planetary Science. Encyclopedia of Earth Science. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4520-4_19
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