Eratosthenes

About Eratosthenes

Eratosthenes of Cyrene, who lived from approximately 276 to 194 BCE, was a towering figure in ancient Greek scholarship, earning the #347 rank in historical importance. Serving as the chief librarian at the Library of Alexandria, his primary contributions span geography, mathematics, and astronomy. Most famously, he calculated the circumference of the Earth with remarkable accuracy by measuring the angle of the sun's shadow at two different locations, an intellectual feat that required sophisticated geometric principles.

In the modern digital era, Eratosthenes commands an attention level that roughly matches his historical standing, with 384K annualized Wikipedia views in 2025, yielding an Attention Gap of only about 1x. This puts him in relative parity with his importance. For context among his ancient peers, this view count is significantly lower than Pontius Pilate (#467 importance, 1.3M views) or Mary Magdalene (#580 importance, 1.9M views), illustrating that not all ancient figures who feature highly in historical influence achieve proportional internet traffic.

His 2025 performance shows a slight, yet non-zero, positive trend, with his momentum increasing by +21% between Q1 and Q3 of the year, even as his year-over-year change remains negligibly negative at -0.6%.