Aristarchus Biography

Aristarchus biography, outline: Greek astronomer, born 310  BC (Samos), developed heliocentric model of the universe, died 230 BC.

Aristarchus of Samos is the main precursor of Copernicus. He was a student at the  Lyceum in Alexandria under Strato, who had headed Aristotle's Lyceum in Athens. As a geometer, his main influence was Euclid and his main successor was Archimedes.

Aristarchus is the first person on record to maintain the following axioms:

1. The rotation of the stars is due to the Earth rotating on its axis. 
2. The earth follows a circular orbit around the Sun. 
3. The Sun is fixed at the centre of the universe, and the stars are fixed in the heavens. 
4. The stars are a vast distance away, otherwise stellar parallax would be easily observed.
5. The Sun is one of the fixed stars.
6. The moon rotates around the Earth.

The only treatise of Aristrachus that has survived is “On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and Moon.” In this, Aristarchus used Anaxagoras' idea that the Moon reflected sunlight to calculate the distance to the Sun. But he was more of a mathematician than an observational astronomer and did not make the effort to determine when, precisely, the moon was at half phase or determine a good value for the diameter of the moon. So although his mathematical procedure was correct, his figure for the distance to the Sun was an order of magnitude too small. Eratosthenes produced values that were within 2% of today's values.   

Aristarchus' ideas on the movements of the Earth have come down to us from Archimedes and Plutarch. His only existing work is “On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and Moon.” 

This biography of Aristarchus  has focussed on his philosophical and scientific views, for a broader and more detailed account you should refer to Encyclopaedia Britannica. For an excellent, popular work placing Aristarchus in the history of cosmology try Big Bang by Simon Singh.