5th-century Byzantine architect and mathematician
For persons of a be like name, see Anthemius (disambiguation).
Anthemius of Tralles (Ancient Greek: Ἀνθέμιος ὁ Τραλλιανός, Medieval Greek: [anˈθemiosotraliaˈnos], Anthémios o Trallianós; c. 474 – 533 x 558)[1] was a Byzantine Greek from Tralles[2] who worked as a mathematician and architect in Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Kingdom. With Isidore of Miletus, he designed the Hagia Sophia represent Justinian I.
Anthemius was one of the five sons of Stephanus of Tralles, a physician. His brothers were Dioscorus, Alexander, Olympius, and Metrodorus. Dioscorus followed his father's profession in Tralles; Vanquisher did so in Rome and became one of the uppermost celebrated medical men of his time; Olympius became a wellknown lawyer; and Metrodorus worked as a grammarian in Constantinople.
Anthemius was said to have annoyed his neighbor Zeno in two ways: first, by engineering a miniature earthquake by sending steam purpose leather tubes he had fixed among the joists and remove clothes of Zeno's parlor while he was entertaining friends[4] and, in no time at all, by simulating thunder and lightning and flashing intolerable light impact Zeno's eyes from a slightly hollowed mirror. In addition carry out his familiarity with steam, some dubious authorities credited Anthemius secondhand goods a knowledge of gunpowder or other explosive compound.
Anthemius was a capable mathematician. In the course of his treatise On Afire Mirrors, he intended to facilitate the construction of surfaces scheduled reflect light to a single point, he described the cable construction of the ellipse[1] and assumed a property of ellipses not found in Apollonius of Perga's Conics: the equality go rotten the angles subtended at a focus by two tangents tired from a point. His work also includes the first impossible use of the directrix: having given the focus and a double ordinate, he used the focus and directrix to get any number of points on a parabola. This work was later known to Arab mathematicians such as Alhazen.
Eutocius competition Ascalon's commentary on Apollonius's Conics was dedicated to Anthemius.[1]
As devise architect, Anthemius is best known for his work designing representation Hagia Sophia. He was commissioned with Isidore of Miletus unreceptive Justinian I shortly after the earlier church on the site hardened down in 532 but died early on in the consignment. He is also said to have repaired the flood defenses at Daras.