Euclides (Euclid)

Flourishing circa 295 b.c.e.

Mathematician

Sources

Uncertain Biography. Although Euclid is one of the more identifiable and enduring writers in classical antiquity by giving his name to a branch of geometry—Euclidean—little is known about his life. Only two biographical details can be established: he was intermediate between Plato (died circa 347 b.c.e.) and Archimedes (born circa 287 b.c.e.); and he taught in Alexandria in Egypt. Earlier scholars believed that Euclid came after Archimedes because Euclid’s Elements 1.2 is cited in Archimedes’ work, but the passage is regarded as an interpolation. Mathematical commentator Pappus of Alexandria (flourishing 320 c.e.) records that Apollonius lived in Alexandria with Euclid’s students and this time period was probably between 246 and 221. One anecdote reveals the only personal detail, recorded by the Lycian Neo-platonist philosopher Proclus, who tells us that King Ptolemy (which Ptolemy is not stated) asked Euclid whether there was an easier way to learn geometry other than reading the whole of Elements. Euclid is said to have replied that “there is no royal road to geometry.”

Mathematical Contributions. In addition to Euclid’s contributions to the study of geometry, which were substantial because of the influence of Elements, considered the standard textbook for more than two thousand years, he also wrote on conics, optics, and music (although some of the authorship of these works is disputed). He also wrote another work on geometry, Data.

Sources

Benno Artmann, Euclid: The Creation of Mathematics (New York: Springer, 1999).

Ian Mueller, Philosophy of Mathematics and Deductive Structure in Euclid’s Elements (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1981).

G. J. Toomer, “Euclid,” in The Oxford Classical Dictionary, edited by Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth, third edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 564.