Anthemius of Tralles

Anthemius of Tralles (about 474 to between 533 and 558) was a Greek mathematician and architect from Tralles in Asia Minor. He was one of five sons of the physician Stephanus; his brother Alexander became a physician in Rome. With Isidore of Miletus he designed Hagia Sophia in Constantinople for the emperor Justinian I after the previous church on the site burned in 532.

Hagia Sophia was built in less than six years, from February 532 to its dedication in December 537. Its central dome rests on pendentives, curved triangles of masonry that carry a round dome over the square formed by four large piers, and two half-domes extend the space to the east and west. The building measures 82 by 73 meters. It was the largest church in the world for more than 500 years, until the abbey church at Cluny in France was completed in the 12th century.

His treatise On Burning Mirrors studies how curved mirrors focus sunlight. In it he described drawing an ellipse with a loop of string and constructing a parabola from a fixed point and a fixed line, its focus and directrix. Later Arab mathematicians, including Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen), used the work. He is also reported to have repaired flood defenses at Dara in Mesopotamia.