Joseph Gonzalez

9/5/21
P.7
Geometry Honors Gifted
Ms. Llanes

Euclid of Alexandria: The Father of Geometry

 Euclid of Alexandria was a Greek mathematician who lived around 325 BC until 265 BC.
He is referred to as Euclid of Alexandria as too not be confused with Greek philosopher, Euclid
of Megara. Euclid’s life had one of the biggest impacts on ancient and modern geometry and his
work is still taught and influential today.
Little is known of his early life other than the reports of Proclus, a Greek philosopher
who lived through 410-485 AD, in his outline of renowned Greek mathematicians. He reported
that Euclid taught at his own school in Alexandria during the rule of Ptolemy I Soter in 323 to
285 BC. There is other information concerning the life of Euclid, but it is widely believed to be
unreliable. It was given by Arabian authors who claim that Euclid was the son of Naucrates and
that he was born in Tyre, however historians believe this is completely made up. Because he was
so familiar with the geometry of Eudoxus and Theaetetus, it is very likely Euclid was a student
and studied at Plato’s school in Athens.
Euclid’s greatest and most known contribution to geometry was a 13-volume set of books
called The Elements. It included a combination of postulates, theorems, and constructions of
geometry. The book was a collection of the work of Euclid, Thales of Miletus, Pythagoras,
Hippocrates of Chios, Plato, Archimedes of Apollonius, Syracuse, Hypatia of Alexandria, and
other great mathematicians who came before him. The Elements quickly became a widely
accepted summary of advanced geometry and compiled the knowledge of so many
mathematicians that it became the beginning of the geometry we still use today, Euclidean
geometry, and earned him the title Father of Geometry.
His book was made up of 13 different articles that each focused on a different aspect of
geometry. Book I consisted of teachings of triangles, parallels, and area; Book II, geometric
algebra; Book III, circles; Book IV, Constructions for inscribed and circumscribed figures; Book
V, theories of proportions; Book VI, similar figures and proportions; Book VII, fundamentals of
number theory; Book VIII, continued proportions in number theory; Book IX, number theory;
Book X, classification of incommensurables; Book XI, solid geometry; Book XII, measurements
of figures; and Book XIII, regular solids.

One of the most important collection of postulates in The Elements, is Euclid’s Five
Postulates of Geometry, which are introduced in the beginning of Book I. They went: A straight
line segment can be drawn joining any two points; given a line and a point not on the line, it is
possible to draw exactly one line through the given point parallel to the line; Given any straight-
line segment, a circle can be drawn having the segment as a radius and one endpoint as the
center; All right angles are congruent; If two lines are drawn which intersect a third in such a
way that the sum of the inner angles on one side is less than two right angles, then the two lines
inevitably must intersect each other on that side if extended far enough. This postulate is
equivalent to what is known as the parallel postulate. These postulates are crucial to the
foundations of Euclidean geometry.
Similar to postulates, Euclid’s five axioms, or common notions, are statements or
proposition which is regarded as being established, accepted, or self-evidently true. They went:
things which are equal to the same thing are also equal to each other; if equals are added to
equals, the wholes are equals; if equals are subtracted from equals, the remainders are equal;
things which coincide with one another are equal to one another; and the whole is greater than
the part. These were also introduced in Book I
Euclid presented his geometry as an axiomatic system: every statement was either an
axiom, a postulate, or was supported by logical steps that followed from axioms and postulates.
He also included definitions in the beginning of each book, for example, a point, line, plane
angle, and perpendicular. The ideas may seem obvious, but Euclid intended his geometry to be
based on notions that were so evident that no one could possibly doubt them. Euclid derives the
rest of geometry from his definitions, postulates, and common notions.
As for Euclid’s other works, over half his writings are lost in history. We only know they
exist because other ancient writers and mathematicians refer to them. The lost books include
research on conic sections, logical fallacies, and “porisms”. Historians are still unsure what
porisms are. Euclid's works that still exist are The Elements, Data, Division of
Figures, Phenomena, and Optics.

Throughout ancient times, commentaries of The Elements were written by Heron of Alexandria
in 62 AD, Pappus of Alexandria in 320 AD, and Simplicius of Cilicia around 530 AD. The father
of Hypatia, Theon of Alexandria, edited the Elements, with textual changes and some additions
at some point in his lifetime throughout 335-405 AD. His interpretation was quickly popularized
and drove other versions out of existence, and it remained the Greek source for all Latin and
Arabic translations up until 1808, when an earlier edition was found in Vatican. Euclid’s impact
on Islamic mathematics is visible through numerous translations including three written by al-
Ḥajjāj ibn Yūsuf ibn Maṭar and Isḥāq ibn Ḥunayn, and revised by Thābit ibn Qurrah and Naṣīr
al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī from years 786-1274. Euclid first became known in Europe through Latin
translations of these three versions. Adelard of Bath, who received a copy of an Arabic version in
Spain while disguised as a Muslim student, wrote the earliest existing Latin translation of the
Elements around 1120. Adelard also wrote a shortened version and a commentary edition,
establishing a major Euclidean tradition that would last until the Renaissance rediscovered Greek
texts. Bartolomeo Zamberti produced the first direct translation from Greek without the use of an
Arabic mediator, which was published in Latin in Vienna in 1505. Sir Henry Billingsley
published the first English translation of the Elements in 1570. The impact of this on European
mathematics cannot be exaggerated; Kepler's, Pierre de Fermat's, René Descartes', and Isaac
Newton's ideas and methods were strongly rooted in, and inconceivable without, Euclid's
Elements.
The Elements have had a continual and profound influence on mathematical discovery
almost since the time of its publication. It was the main source of geometric reasoning, theorems,
and methods until the 19th century, when non-Euclidean geometry developed.
 Euclid of Alexandria may not have been a world-class mathematician, but he established
a standard for deductive reasoning and geometric education that has lasted for over 2,000 years,
practically unchanged.
BIBLIOGRAPHY

- https://www.storyofmathematics.com/hellenistic_euclid.html
- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Euclid-Greek-mathematician
- https://www.worldhistory.org/Euclid/
- https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Euclid/
- http://mypages.iit.edu/~maslanka/16Prop.pdf
- https://www.thesaurus.com/