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AUTHORS: Achillini, Alessandro Agricola, Georgius Alberti, Leone Battista Archimedes Aristotle Babington, John Baif, Lazare de Baldi, Bernardino Baliani, Giovanni Battista Barocius, Franciscus Benedetti, Giovanni Battista Berga, Antonio Biancani, Giuseppe Borelli, Giovanni Alfonso Borro, Girolamo Boyle, Robert Branca, Giovanni Buonamici, Francesco Buteo, Johannes Cardano, Girolamo Casati, Paolo Castelli, Benedetto Cataneo, Girolamo Ceredi, Giuseppe Ceva, Giovanni Cicero, M. Tullius Commandino, Federico Delfino, Federico Descartes, Rene Epicurus Euclid Fabri, Honore Foscarini, Paolo Antonio Galilei, Galileo Gassendi, Pierre Ghetaldi, Marino Giphanius, Hubert Guevara, Giovanni di Heron Alexandrinus Heytesbury, William Hutton, Charles Jordanus de Nemore Landi, Bassiano Lorini, Buonaiuto Lucretius Manuzio, Paolo Marci of Kronland, Johannes Marcus Mellini, Domenico Mersenne, Marin Monantheuil, Henri de Monte, Guidobaldo del Morelli, Gregorio Newton, Isaac Pacioli, Luca Pappus Alexandrinus Salusbury, Thomas Santbech, Daniel Schott, Gaspar Schreck, Johann Terrenz Stelliola, Niccolò Antonio Stevin, Simon Tartaglia, Niccolò Thomaz, Alvaro Thucydides Torricelli, Evangelista Valerio, Luca Varro, Michel Vitruvius Pollio Wolff, Christian von |
Euclid born around 365, died around 300 B.C. Little is known about his life. According to Proclus he was younger than the first pupils of Plato, whose research he used, and older than Archimedes, who took his postulates for granted. During the rule of Ptolemy I he worked in Alexandria. Pappos extols his benevolence to other mathematicians and his modesty in not exaggerating the importance of his own achievements. His main work is the Elements, which probably originated around 325 B.C. and exerted a decisive influence on the development of mathematics well into the 19th century. These elements are exemplary in composition and structure throughout the entire work and, as Aristotle claimed any demonstrative science must, starts with definitions, postulates and axioms from which further theses are derived deductively in the form of problems or theorems. The elements are essentially a summary of the geometric knowledge accumulated by his predecessors, but this hardly lessens Euclid’s importance and uniqueness in science. Also preserved is his Data, which deals with planimetric questions and supplements the Elements. He addresses important questions of mathematical astronomy in his Phaenomena. In Optica the laws of perspective are described and the apparent size and shape of figures studied from varying positions and distances. The Sectio canonis portrays the Pythagorean theory of music in the manner of the Elements. All of Euclid’s works are known only through ancient testimony. The attribution of a Cataoptrics (theory of reflections) to Euclid is questionable. It is also unclear whether Euclid was actually the author of a book on mechanics (De levi et ponderoso) in Arabic that was preserved in Latin translation.
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