10G7 



attracted, some historians say, even more by Ptoleniaic gold and 

 generosity than by the center's extensive research facilities. 



In the beginning Ptolemy I persuaded Demetrios of Phaleron, a 

 Greek statesman and student of Aristotle, and Straton, the physicist, 

 to come to Alexandria. In addition to acting as advisors on government 

 science policy, both held other prestigious posts : Demetrios became the 

 first director of the newly formed library and museum, and Straton 

 became the tutor of Ptolemy II. (Straton later returned to Athens, 

 having been retrieved by the Greeks with an offer to head the Lyceum.) 



The research facilities that the Ptolemies built were extraordinary 

 for the time; apparently neither expense nor effort was spared. The 

 museum and library resembled present day government research in- 

 stitutes or university graduate schools. The museum, built within the 

 palace compound, consisted of astronomical observatories with bronze 

 instruments, laboratories and dissecting rooms, botanical and zoologi- 

 cal gardens, lecture and seminar rooms, dining halls, dormitories, 

 temples, and library buildings. The entire complex represented an 

 enormous investment in gold and human effort. The library, said to 

 have been started with books Demetrios had brought from Aristotle's 

 library in Athens, grew to an impressive collection of some 500,000 to 

 700,000 volumes, all classified and catalogued. Besides what has been 

 described as the "congenial and stimulating atmosphere" and excellent 

 j-esearch facilities, the Ptolemies underwrote the costs in room and 

 board for their scholars as well as providing generous salaries. 



What was produced in Alexandria is a matter of historical record. 

 It is said that most of the best works in science and philosophy fi om 

 800 B.C. to 500 A.D., having a bearing on present developments in 

 these fields, could be traced to Alexandria. Among the intellectual 

 products of its institutions are the steam engine (Hero) , the hydraulic 

 screw (Archimedes), plane geometry (Euclid), conies (Apollonios), 

 the Copernican theory of the solar system (Aristarchos), nnd the ac- 

 curate measurement of the Earth's circumference (Eratosthenes). 



But most important for the purposes of this study, as Stevan Dedi- 

 jer wrote : "All the brains producing them in Alexandria seem to have 

 come from somewhere else." Included among those scholars drained 

 from other lands are eight directors of the library-museum who have 

 been identified in the institution's 800-year history. Very few native 

 Egyptians or even Alexandria-born Greeks are among the names of 

 known scholars and scientists.^^ 



Talent Migration in the Middle East and Medieval Europe 



Historians of science record instances of government policies de- 

 signed to attract foreign scientists in states contemporaneous with 

 Alexandria, in late Antiquity, and during the golden age of Islam. 

 Kiiig Husraw Anusirwan, a Persian King with pronounced pro-Greek 

 tendencies, systematically gathered scholars, physicians, and scientists 

 to the observatory, medical schools, a^d lectiire halls of the university 

 he had established at Gundi Sapur in East Persia. Constriction of in- 



«5Ibid., pp. 15-16. Xenophon Leon Messinesl makes this Judgment on the value of these 

 scholars and the museum : "The facilities offered by the Museum . . . and the induce- 

 ment of higher emoluments offered by the Ptolemies gradually attracted the greatest 

 scientists so that the Museum soon became th€> cJUlef repositpry of knowledge and seat of 

 learning of the ancient world." Xenophon Leon ' Messinesi, Meet the Ancient Oreeka, 

 (Caldwell, Idaho : Caxton Printers, 1959), p. 176. 



