Mortal through I be, yea ephemeral, if but a moment
I gaze up at the night's starry domain of heaven,
Then no longer on earth I stand; I touch the Creator,
And my lively spirit drinketh immortality.

Ptolemy (100 CE-170 CE), Claudius Ptolemy was an Alexandrian mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist,who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were of importance to later Byzantine, Islamic, and Western European science.