However, to alter it significantly would require establishing a narrower date-range for a
large number of the poorly-dated scientists, or else would require finding many hitherto
unknown scientists dating to post-Hadrianic times, either of which would be another
welcome result.
IV. Creation of the Encyclopedia. The germ of this encyclopedia was sown two
decades ago when Keyser began annotating the margins of his copy of the OCD, 2nd ed.,
with missing scientists. That seed fell on fertile ground during a memorable dinner with
Richard Stoneman celebrating the publication of Irby-Massie and Keyser (2002), at the
APA meeting of January 2002. The first contributor was recruited that very evening, and
numerous scholars were contacted over the next 18 months. Almost all were supportive,
and most were willing to participate; many others provided useful advice. Scholars were
recruited in the first instance to compose groups of entries (e.g., on medical Empiricists,
or Neo-Platonic mathematics, or Hellenistic and Greco-Roman agronomy); nevertheless
many scientists were covered individually. In the end, slightly over half of our entries, and
all the more important, were contributed by 119 scholars familiar with the relevant material
(listed below); the balance were composed by the editors. One team of contributors contrib-
uted many entries on paradoxographers, and the entries on the Sanskrit authors were also
planned as teamwork; other collaborations developed in the course of the work.
The editors specified the total lengths of sets of entries to be supplied; individual contri-
butors were then free to adjust the relative lengths within their sets as they saw fit. We
selected a few entries (Aristotle, Gale ̄n, Ptolemy) to have the maximum length, of ca 2,
words. For most of the entries, much lengthier pieces could have been written, and it is
hoped that the texts here, together with their bibliographies, will serve as a useful introduction.
For the better-known scientists (the three mentioned and many others), the bibliographies
must perforce be very selective and serve only as prolegomena.
Anaximandros and Anaximene ̄s, similarly-named and both of Mile ̄tos, are nonetheless
well-distinguished; there are cases far more problematic than that herein. Despite care and
diligence, we cannot be sure to have made all distinctions correctly, and in some cases the
entries discuss the problems quite explicitly: see esp. Aelianus, Apollo ̄nios, Apuleius/Placitus
Papyriensis, De ̄me ̄trios, pseudo-De ̄mokritos, Dionusios, Magnus, Olumpiodo ̄ros, Orpheus,
Plutarch, and Stephanos.
Less than 25% of our entries are found in English-language reference works (such as
OCD3 or DSB), although the BNP when complete will contain about 40% of our entries;
even in such works the coverage of Latin authors is almost twice that of the Greeks. More-
over, about 1/8 of our entries are not listed in any encyclopedia whatsoever, neither the
famously capacious 85-volume RE, nor even the most complete list of medical authors
heretofore, Fabricius (1726). We consulted not only modern encyclopedias, but also many
ancient authors more generous than usual with explicit citation (esp. Aëtios of Amida,
Gale ̄n, Io ̄anne ̄s of Stoboi, Oreibasios, Paulos of Aigina, Pappos, Pliny, Plutarch, Proklos,
Simplicius, and Vitruuius). Finally, over 1/5 of our 2,043 entries were discovered during the
writing of the originally-proposed 1,558 entries.
The proportion of entries herein not found in any encyclopedia, averaging 1/8, seems
to rise from about 1/12 early in the English (or German) alphabet to over one-seventh at the
end (See the last Index). Compared to the distribution of initial letters in the names of
the LGPN, some of our initial letters seem underrepresented. Those observations, as well as
the fact that many entries were discovered during composition, suggests that there are still
INTRODUCTION