Anaxagoras

Anaxagoras of Clazomenae (about 499 to 428 BC) was a Greek thinker whom MacTutor presents as a mathematician for his work in geometry and in mathematical astronomy. Born in Ionia near Smyrna, he gave up a considerable inheritance to devote himself to science and moved to Athens about 480 BC, where he is said to have been the first to introduce philosophy and became a friend of Pericles. About 450 BC he was imprisoned for claiming that the Sun was not a god but a red-hot stone and that the Moon reflected the Sun's light, and he later died in Lampsacus. He is credited as the first to explain eclipses correctly, although he spoilt his account of lunar eclipses by adding further dark bodies. Proclus records that he dealt with many questions in geometry, and his doctrine of nous, or mind, as the force that set the original mixture of matter in motion made him a founding figure of Athenian natural philosophy.