Marinus of Tyre

Marinus of Tyre (around AD 70–130) was a Phoenician Roman who spoke Greek. He was a geographer, cartographer, and mathematician.

Marinus is most famous for starting something called mathematical geography. This means he used math to help make better maps of the Earth.

His ideas helped a book named Geography written by Claudius Ptolemy. This book was very important and influenced how people saw the world for many years.

Life

Marinus was from Tyre in the Roman province of Phoenicia. He was a geographer whose work helped make maps and learn about the world. The famous geographer Claudius Ptolemy used Marinus' ideas in his book Geography. Other writers, like the Arab geographer al-Masʿūdī, also talked about his work. Sadly, not much else is known about his life.

Legacy

Marinus helped improve maps and made a new system for sea charts. He was the first to give each place a proper latitude and longitude. His starting line for longitude ran through the westernmost land known at the time, near today’s Canary or Cape Verde Islands. He used the latitude of Rhodes for his measurements.

Marinus looked at the work of earlier mapmakers and travelers. His maps were the first in the Roman Empire to show China. He created a way to draw maps called equirectangular projection, which is still used today. He thought the world’s oceans were split into two parts by Europe, Asia, and Africa. Marinus also named the area opposite the Arctic the Antarctic.

In 1935, a mark on the Moon was named after Marinus.