The Greek physician credited with the earliest attested mention of cheesecake is Aegimus.
Aegimus, also written Aegimius, is described as a Greek physician who lived in the 5th century BCE. Later writers report that he wrote a treatise about the art of making cheesecakes, giving him the earliest attested connection to the dessert in the surviving historical record.
The evidence is indirect rather than a surviving recipe by Aegimus. Athenaeus, writing in the 2nd century CE, referred to an earlier work associated with Aegimius and cheesecake-making. The original treatise is lost, so historians know its subject through later testimony rather than through the physician’s own text.
Aegimus should not be confused with Hippocrates, the better-known physician traditionally associated with the Hippocratic Corpus, or with later figures such as Galen and Dioscorides. Ancient cheesecake itself was not identical to today’s cream-cheese dessert. Roman sources preserve related cheese cakes, while modern cheesecake developed through many later European and American adaptations.