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HAPPY 1400TH BIRTHDAY, ANANIA SHIRAKATSI
By Hank Campbell
Science 2.0
http://www.science20.com/science_20/blog/happy_1400th_birthday_anania_shirakatsi-78285
April 20 2011
Anania Shirakatsi (Ananias of Shirak) was an Armenian scientist
and mathematician, famous there for authoring two important works,
Geography and Cosmography and the Calendar, which tackled astronomy,
meteorology, and geography.
He is considered the father of natural sciences in Armenia and his
books, while readable to a lay audience, were also technical enough
to be used as textbooks for centuries.
He described the world as "being like an egg with a spherical yolk
(the globe) surrounded by a layer of white (the atmosphere) and
covered with a hard shell (the sky)" and wrote that "that the Milky
Way is a mass of dense but faintly luminous stars and agreed with
earlier philosophers that the moon was a dark body by nature whose
only light was that which it reflected from the sun" and he described
his education as that he ~Sacquired a perfect knowledge of mathematics.
In addition, I also learned a few elements of other sciences."
Anania Shirakatsi's 1400th anniversay has been included in UNESCO's
honorary list of anniversaries for 2012. So why say happy birthday
today? Well, no one knows when he was actually born - or where,
despite leaving an autobiography. Various sources have it between
2010-2012 and one of the things he attempted to accomplish was getting
the Armenian Apostolic Church to modify the Armenian calendar from
a movable to fixed system. He also did not think the seven day week,
lunar month and solar year were all that great so his version had a
cycle of 532 years. It was never adopted but it was interesting and,
since no one knows when he was actually born, I might as well make
today Anania Shirakatsi day.
From: A. Papazian
By Hank Campbell
Science 2.0
http://www.science20.com/science_20/blog/happy_1400th_birthday_anania_shirakatsi-78285
April 20 2011
Anania Shirakatsi (Ananias of Shirak) was an Armenian scientist
and mathematician, famous there for authoring two important works,
Geography and Cosmography and the Calendar, which tackled astronomy,
meteorology, and geography.
He is considered the father of natural sciences in Armenia and his
books, while readable to a lay audience, were also technical enough
to be used as textbooks for centuries.
He described the world as "being like an egg with a spherical yolk
(the globe) surrounded by a layer of white (the atmosphere) and
covered with a hard shell (the sky)" and wrote that "that the Milky
Way is a mass of dense but faintly luminous stars and agreed with
earlier philosophers that the moon was a dark body by nature whose
only light was that which it reflected from the sun" and he described
his education as that he ~Sacquired a perfect knowledge of mathematics.
In addition, I also learned a few elements of other sciences."
Anania Shirakatsi's 1400th anniversay has been included in UNESCO's
honorary list of anniversaries for 2012. So why say happy birthday
today? Well, no one knows when he was actually born - or where,
despite leaving an autobiography. Various sources have it between
2010-2012 and one of the things he attempted to accomplish was getting
the Armenian Apostolic Church to modify the Armenian calendar from
a movable to fixed system. He also did not think the seven day week,
lunar month and solar year were all that great so his version had a
cycle of 532 years. It was never adopted but it was interesting and,
since no one knows when he was actually born, I might as well make
today Anania Shirakatsi day.
From: A. Papazian