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Eratosthenes of Cyrene The great mathematician Eratosthenes was born in Cyrene, North Africa (now Shahhat, Libya), in about 285 B.C. (O’Conner 1) He would go on to live in Athens, Greece and then Alexandria, where he was named Librarian of the Royal Library of Alexandria; he would eventually become known as “The Great Alexandrian Scholar” (Fraser 4) and the “Pentathlete” (Mahoney 542). One of Eratosthenes’ most famous works was the Platonicus, which dealt with the mathematics underlying Plato’s philosophies. The book is now lost forever, but records show that it dealt with such topics as the basic definitions of geometry and arithmetic, as well as covering music. (O’Conner 1) The most important of Eratosthenes’ findings is his ingenious measurement of the earth’s circumference; he was able to measure the angle between the sun’s rays and a perpendicular line at the same time in Alexandria (Mahoney 541). Eratosthenes also worked on prime numbers, and