The Elements of Euclid
It is a tragedy of mathematics that what we know of Euclid's life is so meager. It is because of Euclid's work that mathematics was able progress so rapidly in classical times. Euclid's masterpiece The Elements was so popular that it became the most widely read book until the twentieth century (with the exception of The Bible). However, our tragedy lies in what we actually know about Euclid. The sources of Euclid's life are but a few passages from commentators who claim they knew who Euclid was. To this day, there have been only five commentators of Euclid, which are Proclus, Heron, Porphyry, Pappus, and Simplicius (Proclus being the most prominent).1 Pre-twentieth century The Elements was considered the authoritative standard of basic concepts in geometry , number theory, and logic.It is speculated that Euclid flourished around 300BCE. This has been estimated by one of the passages that Proclus wrote in his Commentary on the First Book of Euclid's Elements. The passage is as follows: "Not much younger than these(sc. Hermotimus of Colophon and Philippus of Medma) is Euclid, who put together the Elements, Collecting many of Eudoxus' theorems, perfecting many of Theaetetus', and also bringing
6- Which when added make: 1+2+4+7+14=28, a perfect number!10 4- Then we continue in the same way until we reach a remainder of 0, which would look like this: = 1 R4 Aside from Euclid's most famous work The Elements, he also produced many other works which are important to note. As for Euclid's other extant works, these include Data, Division of Figures, Phaenomena, and Optics. Unfortunately, all of Euclid's extant works are all translations and more than probably they have been edited. However, there has also been a number of other works attributed to Euclid (but questionable) that have not survived; these include Porisms, Surface Loci, Pseudaria, and Conics.4
Some common words found in the essay are:
Euclidean Algorithm, Ptolemy Euclid, Elements Euclid, Euclid's Elements, Ptolemy Soter, Simplicius Proclus, Greece Alexandria, Eratosthenes Archimedes, Collecting Eudoxus', Unfortunately Euclid's, common divisor, euclidean algorithm, euclid proved, euclid's life, euclid flourished 300bce, anecdote told, 72 20, euclid's extant, thirteen books, euclid flourished, infinitude prime, algorithm finding common, follows 1- suppose,
Approximate Word count = 1372
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
|
