fl. c. 300 BCE · mathematician
Euclid
Εὐκλείδης
In Alexandria: c. 300 BCE
Author of the Elements, the most used textbook in history. Proclus places him under Ptolemy I and has him tell the king there is no royal road to geometry, a retort told of others too. Pappus says Apollonius studied with Euclid's pupils in Alexandria. Of his life nothing else is known.
Their life and work
The Elements, in thirteen books, set out plane geometry, proportion, number and solid geometry from definitions, postulates and common notions, and gather the work of earlier mathematicians, Eudoxus and Theaetetus among them. He also wrote the Data, the Optics and the Phaenomena, which survive, and lost works on conics and porisms. Nearly every manuscript descends from Theon's edition of the late fourth century; a Vatican manuscript that escaped it was recognised by Peyrard in 1808, and Heiberg's text of 1883–88, the one read today, rests on it together with the best of Theon's copies.
That he worked in Alexandria is inferred from Pappus, writing some six centuries later, and Proclus, some seven and a half. No earlier source places him, and his life is otherwise a blank. Known: probable
Our device: Their emblem is a pair of compasses. No portrait of any of these people survives. The emblems are our devices.
On the shelves
- Euclid, Elements · c. 300 BCE · Survives whole
- Euclid, Optics, Phaenomena, Data · c. 300 BCE · Survives in large part
Moments
- c. 300 BCE · Euclid teaches geometry under Ptolemy I Known: probable
In the show
- Presocratic vs Socratic Philosophy, episode 20, at 2 minutes 23 secondsTranscript“you people like Uklid and and um Udox is”'Uklid' and 'Udox' are Euclid and Eudoxus, named as philosopher-mathematicians.Known: probable
- Freemasonry · Chronology: The Regius PoemThe Regius Poem 'traces geometry from Euclid to England': in the poem Euclid teaches the craft in Egypt, a legend to label as such.Known: probable
Sources (4)
- Proclus, Commentary on the First Book of Euclid's Elements 68.6–20 Friedlein
- Pappus, Collection 7.35
- T. L. Heath, A History of Greek Mathematics, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1921) 1:354–446 (opens in a new tab)
- Euclid, Elements ed. Heiberg