The Most Famous
ASTRONOMERS from Greece
This page contains a list of the greatest Greek Astronomers. The pantheon dataset contains 531 Astronomers, 3 of which were born in Greece. This makes Greece the birth place of the 26th most number of Astronomers behind Georgia and Austria.
Top 3
The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Greek Astronomers of all time. This list of famous Greek Astronomers is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.
1. Aristarchus of Samos (-311 - -230)
With an HPI of 75.56, Aristarchus of Samos is the most famous Greek Astronomer. His biography has been translated into 64 different languages on wikipedia.
Aristarchus of Samos (; Greek: Ἀρίσταρχος ὁ Σάμιος, Aristarkhos ho Samios; c. 310 – c. 230 BC) was an ancient Greek astronomer and mathematician who presented the first known heliocentric model that placed the Sun at the center of the known universe, with the Earth revolving around the Sun once a year and rotating about its axis once a day. He was a student of Strato of Lampsacus, who was the third head of the Peripatetic School in Greece. Strato didn't think he was correct, even shown all of the evidence. According to Ptolemy, during Aristarchus' time there, he observed the summer solstice of 280 BC. Along with his contributions to the heliocentric model, as reported by Vitruvius, he created two separate sundials: one that is a flat disc; and one hemispherical. Aristarchus was influenced by the concept presented by Philolaus of Croton (c. 470 – 385 BC) of a fire at the center of the universe, but Aristarchus identified the "central fire" with the Sun and he put the other planets in their correct order of distance around the Sun. Like Anaxagoras before him, Aristarchus suspected that the stars were just other bodies like the Sun, albeit farther away from Earth. His astronomical ideas were often rejected in favor of the geocentric theories of Aristotle and Ptolemy. Nicolaus Copernicus knew about the possibility that Aristarchus had a 'moving Earth' theory, although it is unlikely that Copernicus was aware that it was a heliocentric theory. Aristarchus estimated the sizes of the Sun and Moon as compared to Earth's size. He also estimated the distances from the Earth to the Sun and Moon. He is considered one of the greatest astronomers of antiquity along with Hipparchus.
2. Oenopides (-490 - -420)
With an HPI of 51.74, Oenopides is the 2nd most famous Greek Astronomer. Her biography has been translated into 19 different languages.
Oenopides of Chios (Greek: Οἰνοπίδης ὁ Χῖος; born c. 490 BCE) was an ancient Greek geometer, astronomer and mathematician, who lived around 450 BCE.
3. Vicky Kalogera (1975 - )
With an HPI of 25.87, Vicky Kalogera is the 3rd most famous Greek Astronomer. Her biography has been translated into 15 different languages.
Vassiliki Kalogera is a Greek astrophysicist. She is a professor at Northwestern University and the director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA). She is a leading member of the LIGO Collaboration that observed gravitational waves in 2015. Kalogera is a leading theorist in the study of gravitational waves, the emission of X-rays from compact binary objects and the coalescence of neutron-star binaries.
Pantheon has 3 people classified as astronomers born between 490 BC and 1975. Of these 3, 1 (33.33%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living astronomers include Vicky Kalogera. The most famous deceased astronomers include Aristarchus of Samos and Oenopides. As of April 2022, 1 new astronomers have been added to Pantheon including Vicky Kalogera.
