Eratosthenes
Eratosthenes was born in Cyrene. There he read about a vertical well near Syene. At noon once a year, the well was totally lit up by the sun's rays. He measured the angle of it's shadow by placing a post on the shadow at that time and date. He finally made an assumption that the Earth is round and that the sun's rays are parallel. Eratosthenes remembered from geometry that the size of the Earth's center between Alexandria and Syrene equaled the size of the angle he had measured. The result he got was 250,000 stadia (about 46,250 km).
Eratosthenes also determined the o…
