QUOTE

The second story involves one of the few black mathematicians whom white mathematicians acknowledge as great – or, I should say, "black American mathematicians", since obviously Euclid, Eratosthenes and other African mathematicians outshone Europe's brightest stars for millennia.

QUOTE

I first met Blackwell in 1995, in the common room of Berkeley's maths department, one of the few times two black people had ever been in the room.

QUOTE

Eratosthenes was born in Cyrene (in modern-day Libya). The son of Aglaos, Eratosthenes was born in 276 BC, in a city ruled by the Ptolemaic dynasty. The city was colonized in the years after Alexander the Great's conquest. It became the capital of Pentapolis (North Africa), a country of five cities: Cyrene, Arsinde, Berenice, Ptolemias, and Apollonia, Cyrenaica. The rule of Cyrene was given to one of Alexander the Great's generals, Ptolemy I Soter. Under Ptolemaic rule the economy prospered, based largely on the export of horses and silphium, a plant used for rich seasoning and medicine.[3] Cyrene became a place of cultivation, where knowledge blossomed. Like any young Greek, Eratosthenes would have studied in the local gymnasium, where he would have learned physical skills and social discourse as well as reading, writing, arithmetic, poetry, and music.[9]