Autolycus of Pitane

Autolycus of Pitane, who lived from about 360 to about 290 BC, was a Greek astronomer, mathematician and geographer. He was born in Pitane, a town of Aeolis in Asia Minor, was a contemporary of Aristotle, and his works seem to have been completed in Athens between 335 and 300 BC. He is known for his two surviving works, On the Moving Sphere and On Risings and Settings, both about spherical geometry applied to astronomy. On the Moving Sphere is believed to be the oldest completely preserved mathematical treatise from ancient Greece, and it shows that a textbook tradition in geometry was already well established in his day. On Risings and Settings studies the rising and setting of the stars through the year and relies on the astronomy of Eudoxus. Both works were translated into Arabic in the ninth century and from Arabic into Latin in the twelfth century. A lunar crater is named after him.