Geography

Ptolemy was an influential Greco-Roman astronomer, mathematician, and geographer who lived in Alexandria during the 2nd century CE. His work represents a significant culmination of scientific knowledge from that era.1

In geography, Ptolemy's Guide to Geography provided the techniques and information needed to create maps of the known world. He recorded the longitudes and latitudes of approximately 8,000 locations, allowing for the creation of an exact duplicate of his world map. This map depicted the extent of the Roman Empire at its peak, from the Shetland Islands to the Nile and from the Canary Islands to China. While his map projections had distortions, his work significantly influenced cartographers during the Byzantine and Renaissance periods.12