Joseph Justus ScaligerBorn 5 Aug 1540; died 21 Jan 1609 at age 68.French scholar who was one of the founders of the science of chrolonology. Like Roger de Losinga, Bishop of Hereford, centuries before, Scaliger recognized that combining the three cycles of the 28-year solar cycle (S), the 19-year cycle of Golden Numbers (G) and the 15-year indiction cycle (I) produced one greater cycle of 7980 years (28×9×15). Scalinger applied this fact, called a Julian cycle, in his attempt to resolve a patchwork of historical eras and he used notation (S, G, I) to characterize years. The year of Christ's birth had been determined by Dionysius Exigus to be the number 9 on the solar cycle, by Golden Number 1, and by 3 of the indiction cycle, thus (9, 1, 3), which was 4713 of his chronological era. Hence, the year (1, 1, 1) was 4713 B.C. (later adopted as the initial epoch for the Julian day numbers).« |
