The government has plans to fund a new research agency to back ‘cutting-edge science’. Ptolemaios (Ptolemy) I (367-282 bc), the first Greek king of Egypt, had a similar idea.
When Alexander the Great died in 323 bc, his ramshackle ‘empire’ fell apart, and the generals he had left in charge of each region promptly turned themselves into autonomous kings. Egypt’s new king Ptolemy I decided to make Egypt’s ‘capital’ Alexandria the greatest cultural and scientific centre in the world, and the resultant ‘Museum’ became the world’s first scientific research institute. Wielding their cheque-books, the Ptolemies persuaded the finest minds of the day to sign up.
These included Euclid, who invented geometry from simple axioms; Archimedes, who anticipated integral calculus, invented hydrostatics and produced a formula for measuring the volume of a sphere; the geometer Apollonius (conic sections); and the astronomer Aristarchus (the Earth spins around the sun).
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