Find  >  
      Select  >  WhoWhatWhenWhereWhich
         
Timeline
   

Item

         
  More info About: Euclid of Alexandria, Mathematician
  Euclid of Alexandria, Mathematician  >  new window

Euclid of Alexandria is the most prominent mathematician of antiquity best known for his treatise on mathematics The Elements. The long lasting nature of The Elements must make Euclid the leading mathematics teacher of all time. However little is known of Euclid's life except that he taught at Alexandria in Egypt. Proclus, the last major Greek philosopher, who lived around 450 AD wrote : Not much younger than these [pupils of Plato] is Euclid, who put together the "Elements", arranging in order many of Eudoxus's theorems, perfecting many of Theaetetus's, and also bringing to irrefutable demonstration the things which had been only loosely proved by his predecessors. This man lived in the time of the first Ptolemy; for Archimedes, who followed closely upon the first Ptolemy makes mention of Euclid, and further they say that Ptolemy once asked him if there were a shorted way to study geometry than the Elements, to which he replied that there was no royal road to geometry. He is therefore younger than Plato's circle, but older than Eratosthenes and Archimedes; for these were contemporaries, as Eratosthenes somewhere says. In his aim he was a Platonist, being in sympathy with this philosophy, whence he made the end of the whole "Elements" the construction of the so-called Platonic figures.

        More on this Website  >  new window
• http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.u ... aticians/Euclid.html

Related LinksAdd URL  >  new window
Euclid, "The Elements", Dutch translationEdit
Complete Collections of Euclid's ElementsEdit
       
       
 
  Plato, Greek Philosopher
In 407 B.C. he became a pupil and friend of Socrates. After living for a time at the Syracuse court, Plato founded near Athens the most influential school of the ancient...
         
 
  Aristarchus, Sun at center of Universe
Aristarchus of Samosis the first person we know of who suggested that the earth might go around the sun and not the other way around. He figured this out by looking at th...
         
 
  Archimedes of Syracuse
One of the most original thinkers of Antiquity was Archimedes of Syracuse. Because our approach to physics is based upon a model that was developed by this scientist, we...
         
 
  Eratosthenes, Measuring the Earth
Eratosthenes of Cyrene was a Greek scholar who lived and worked in Cyrene and Alexandria. Eratosthenes was director of the famous library in Alexandria, and is known for...
         
 
  The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements
There has never been a writer of mathematics as successful as Euclid. For well over 2000 years the work that Euclid did in compiling The Elements has been the crowning ac...
         
 
  Ptolemy, Astronomer / Geographer
Claudius Ptolemy lived in Alexandria (in Egypt) from approx. 87 -150 AD. He was an astronomer, mathematician and geographer. He codified the Greek geocentric view of the...