Euclid (/jukld/; Greek: Eukleids; fl.

300 BC), sometimes called Euclid of

Alexandria to distinguish him from Euclid of Megara, was a Greek mathematician, often
referred to as the "Father of Geometry". He was active in Alexandria during the reign of
Ptolemy I (323283 BC). His Elements is one of the most influential works in the history of
mathematics, serving as the main textbook for teaching mathematics (especially geometry)
from the time of its publication until the late 19th or early 20th century.[1][2][3] In the Elements,
Euclid deduced the principles of what is now called Euclidean geometry from a small set of
axioms. Euclid also wrote works on perspective, conic sections, spherical geometry, number
theory and rigor.
"Euclid" is the anglicized version of the Greek name , meaning "renowned,
celebrated".[4]

Contents

1 Life

2 Elements

3 Other works

4 See also

5 Notes

6 References

7 Further reading

8 External links

Life
Very few original references to Euclid survive, so little is known about his life. The date,
place and circumstances of both his birth and death are unknown and may only be estimated
roughly relative to other figures mentioned alongside him. He is rarely mentioned by name
by other Greek mathematicians from Archimedes onward, who usually call him "
" ("the author of Elements").[5] The few historical references to Euclid were
written centuries after he lived, by Proclus c. 450 AD and Pappus of Alexandria c. 320 AD.[6]
Proclus introduces Euclid only briefly in his Commentary on the Elements. According to
Proclus, Euclid belonged to Plato's "persuasion" and brought together the Elements, drawing
on prior work by several pupils of Plato (particularly Eudoxus of Cnidus, Theaetetus and
Philip of Opus.) Proclus believes that Euclid is not much younger than these, and that he must
have lived during the time of Ptolemy I because he was mentioned by Archimedes (287-212
BC). Although the apparent citation of Euclid by Archimedes has been judged to be an

interpolation by later editors of his works, it is still believed that Euclid wrote his works
before those of Archimedes.[7][8][9]
Proclus later retells a story that, when Ptolemy I asked if there was a shorter path to learning
geometry than Euclid's Elements, "Euclid replied there is no royal road to geometry."[10] This
anecdote is questionable since it is similar to a story told about Menaechmus and Alexander
the Great.[11]
In the only other key reference to Euclid, Pappus briefly mentioned in the fourth century that
Apollonius "spent a very long time with the pupils of Euclid at Alexandria, and it was thus
that he acquired such a scientific habit of thought" circa 247-222 BC.[12][13]
A detailed biography of Euclid is given by Arabian authors, mentioning, for example, a birth
town of Tyre. This biography is generally believed to be completely fictitious.[8]
Because the lack of biographical information is unusual for the period (extensive biographies
are available for most significant Greek mathematicians for several centuries before and after
Euclid), some researchers have proposed that Euclid was not, in fact, a historical character
and that his works were written by a team of mathematicians who took the name Euclid from
the historical character Euclid of Megara (compare Bourbaki). However, this hypothesis is
not well accepted by scholars and there is little evidence in its favor.[8][14]

Elements

One of the oldest surviving fragments of Euclid's Elements, found at Oxyrhynchus and dated
to circa AD 100 (P. Oxy. 29). The diagram accompanies Book II, Proposition 5.[15]
Main article: Euclid's Elements
Although many of the results in Elements originated with earlier mathematicians, one of
Euclid's accomplishments was to present them in a single, logically coherent framework,
making it easy to use and easy to reference, including a system of rigorous mathematical
proofs that remains the basis of mathematics 23 centuries later.[16]
There is no mention of Euclid in the earliest remaining copies of the Elements, and most of
the copies say they are "from the edition of Theon" or the "lectures of Theon",[17] while the
text considered to be primary, held by the Vatican, mentions no author. The only reference
that historians rely on of Euclid having written the Elements was from Proclus, who briefly in
his Commentary on the Elements ascribes Euclid as its author.
Although best known for its geometric results, the Elements also includes number theory. It
considers the connection between perfect numbers and Mersenne primes (known as the

EuclidEuler theorem), the infinitude of prime numbers, Euclid's lemma on factorization

(which leads to the fundamental theorem of arithmetic on uniqueness of prime
factorizations), and the Euclidean algorithm for finding the greatest common divisor of two
numbers.
The geometrical system described in the Elements was long known simply as geometry, and
was considered to be the only geometry possible. Today, however, that system is often
referred to as Euclidean geometry to distinguish it from other so-called non-Euclidean
geometries that mathematicians discovered in the 19th century.

Other works

Euclid's construction of a regular dodecahedron.

Construction of a dodecahedron by placing faces on the edges of a cube.

In addition to the Elements, at least five works of Euclid have survived to the present day.
They follow the same logical structure as Elements, with definitions and proved propositions.

Data deals with the nature and implications of "given" information in geometrical
problems; the subject matter is closely related to the first four books of the Elements.

On Divisions of Figures, which survives only partially in Arabic translation, concerns

the division of geometrical figures into two or more equal parts or into parts in given
ratios. It is similar to a third-century AD work by Heron of Alexandria.

Catoptrics, which concerns the mathematical theory of mirrors, particularly the

images formed in plane and spherical concave mirrors. The attribution is held to be
anachronistic however by J J O'Connor and E F Robertson who name Theon of
Alexandria as a more likely author.[18]

Phaenomena, a treatise on spherical astronomy, survives in Greek; it is quite similar

to On the Moving Sphere by Autolycus of Pitane, who flourished around 310 BC.

Statue in honor of Euclid in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History

Optics is the earliest surviving Greek treatise on perspective. In its definitions Euclid
follows the Platonic tradition that vision is caused by discrete rays which emanate
from the eye. One important definition is the fourth: "Things seen under a greater
angle appear greater, and those under a lesser angle less, while those under equal
angles appear equal." In the 36 propositions that follow, Euclid relates the apparent
size of an object to its distance from the eye and investigates the apparent shapes of
cylinders and cones when viewed from different angles. Proposition 45 is interesting,
proving that for any two unequal magnitudes, there is a point from which the two
appear equal. Pappus believed these results to be important in astronomy and included
Euclid's Optics, along with his Phaenomena, in the Little Astronomy, a compendium
of smaller works to be studied before the Syntaxis (Almagest) of Claudius Ptolemy.

Other works are credibly attributed to Euclid, but have been lost.

Conics was a work on conic sections that was later extended by Apollonius of Perga
into his famous work on the subject. It is likely that the first four books of
Apollonius's work come directly from Euclid. According to Pappus, "Apollonius,
having completed Euclid's four books of conics and added four others, handed down
eight volumes of conics." The Conics of Apollonius quickly supplanted the former
work, and by the time of Pappus, Euclid's work was already lost.

Porisms might have been an outgrowth of Euclid's work with conic sections, but the
exact meaning of the title is controversial.

Pseudaria, or Book of Fallacies, was an elementary text about errors in reasoning.

Surface Loci concerned either loci (sets of points) on surfaces or loci which were
themselves surfaces; under the latter interpretation, it has been hypothesized that the
work might have dealt with quadric surfaces.

Several works on mechanics are attributed to Euclid by Arabic sources. On the Heavy
and the Light contains, in nine definitions and five propositions, Aristotelian notions
of moving bodies and the concept of specific gravity. On the Balance treats the theory
of the lever in a similarly Euclidean manner, containing one definition, two axioms,
and four propositions. A third fragment, on the circles described by the ends of a
moving lever, contains four propositions. These three works complement each other
in such a way that it has been suggested that they are remnants of a single treatise on
mechanics written by Euclid.

Euclid
Greek mathematician

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Alternate title: Eukleides

Table of Contents

Introduction

Life

Sources and contents of the Elements

Renditions of the Elements

Other writings

Assessment

Major Works

Euclid, Greek Eukleides (born c. 300 bce, Alexandria, Egypt), the most prominent
mathematician of Greco-Roman antiquity, best known for his treatise on geometry, the
Elements.
Life

Of Euclids life nothing is known except what the Greek philosopher Proclus (c. 410485 ce)
reports in his summary of famous Greek mathematicians. According to him, Euclid taught
at Alexandria in the time of Ptolemy I Soter, who reigned over Egypt from 323 to 285 bce.
Medieval translators and editors often confused him with the philosopher Eukleides of
Megara, a contemporary of Plato about a century before, and therefore called him
Megarensis. Proclus supported his date for Euclid by writing Ptolemy once asked Euclid if
there was not a shorter road to geometry than through the Elements, and Euclid replied that
there was no royal road to geometry. Today few historians challenge the consensus that
Euclid was older than Archimedes (c. 290/280212/211 bce).

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Sources and contents of the Elements

Euclid compiled his Elements from a number of works of earlier men. Among these are
Hippocrates of Chios (flourished c. 460 bce), not to be confused with the physician
Hippocrates of Cos (c. 460377 bce). The latest compiler before Euclid was Theudius, whose
textbook was used in the Academy and was probably the one used by Aristotle (384322
bce). The older elements were at once superseded by Euclids and then forgotten. For his
subject matter Euclid doubtless drew upon all his predecessors, but it is clear that the whole
design of his work was his own, culminating in the construction of the five regular solids,
now known as the Platonic solids.
A brief survey of the Elements belies a common belief that it concerns only geometry. This
misconception may be caused by reading no further than Books I through IV, which cover
elementary plane geometry. Euclid understood that building a logical and rigorous geometry
(and mathematics) depends on the foundationa foundation that Euclid began in Book I with
23 definitions (such as a point is that which has no part and a line is a length without
breadth), five unproved assumptions that Euclid called postulates (now known as axioms),
and five further unproved assumptions that he called common notions. Book I then proves
elementary theorems about triangles and parallelograms and ends with the Pythagorean
theorem. (For Euclids proof of the theorem, see Sidebar: Euclids Windmill Proof.)
Euclids axioms Euclids common notions

01

Given two points there is one straight line that joins

them.

02

A straight line segment can be prolonged indefinitely.

03

A circle can be constructed when a point for its centre

and a distance for its radius are given.

04

All right angles are equal.

05

If a straight line falling on two straight lines makes the

interior angles on the same side less than two right
angles, the two straight lines, if produced indefinitely,
meet on that side on which the angles are less than

the two right angles.

06

Things equal to the same thing are equal.

07

If equals are added to equals, the wholes are equal.

08

If equals are subtracted from equals, the remainders

are equal.

09

Things that coincide with one another are equal.

10

The whole is greater than a part.

The subject of Book II has been called geometric algebra because it states algebraic identities
as theorems about equivalent geometric figures. Book II contains a construction of the
section, the division of a line into two parts such that the ratio of the larger to the smaller
segment is equal to the ratio of the original line to the larger segment. (This division was
renamed the golden section in the Renaissance after artists and architects rediscovered its
pleasing proportions.) Book II also generalizes the Pythagorean theorem to arbitrary
triangles, a result that is equivalent to the law of cosines (see plane trigonometry). Book III
deals with properties of circles and Book IV with the construction of regular polygons, in
particular the pentagon.
Book V shifts from plane geometry to expound a general theory of ratios and proportions that
is attributed by Proclus (along with Book XII) to Eudoxus of Cnidus (c. 390350 bce). While
Book V can be read independently of the rest of the Elements, its solution to the problem of
incommensurables (irrational numbers) is essential to later books. In addition, it formed the
foundation for a geometric theory of numbers until an analytic theory developed in the late
19th century. Book VI applies this theory of ratios to plane geometry, mainly triangles and
parallelograms, culminating in the application of areas, a procedure for solving quadratic
problems by geometric means.
Books VIIIX contain elements of number theory, where number (arithmos) means positive
integers greater than 1. Beginning with 22 new definitionssuch as unity, even, odd, and
primethese books develop various properties of the positive integers. For instance, Book
VII describes a method, antanaresis (now known as the Euclidean algorithm), for finding the
greatest common divisor of two or more numbers; Book VIII examines numbers in continued
proportions, now known as geometric sequences (such as ax, ax2, ax3, ax4); and Book IX
proves that there are an infinite number of primes.
According to Proclus, Books X and XIII incorporate the work of the Pythagorean Theaetetus
(c. 417369 bce). Book X, which comprises roughly one-fourth of the Elements, seems
disproportionate to the importance of its classification of incommensurable lines and areas
(although study of this book would inspire Johannes Kepler [15711630] in his search for a
cosmological model).

Books XIXIII examine three-dimensional figures, in Greek stereometria. Book XI concerns

the intersections of planes, lines, and parallelepipeds (solids with parallel parallelograms as
opposite faces). Book XII applies Eudoxuss method of exhaustion to prove that the areas of
circles are to one another as the squares of their diameters and that the volumes of spheres are
to one another as the cubes of their diameters. Book XIII culminates with the construction of
the five regular Platonic solids (pyramid, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, icosahedron) in a
given sphere, as displayed in the animation.
The unevenness of the several books and the varied mathematical levels may give the
impression that Euclid was but an editor of treatises written by other mathematicians. To
some extent this is certainly true, although it is probably impossible to figure out which parts
are his own and which were adaptations from his predecessors. Euclids contemporaries
considered his work final and authoritative; if more was to be said, it had to be as
commentaries to the Elements.