Euclid - The Mathematical Genius Of Greece

Euclid, also known as Euclid of Alexandria, was a Greek mathematician. He made his contributions during the reign of Ptolemy I and is referred to as the Father of Geometry”.

Not many things are known about Euclid as there are only few references about him. In fact the date and place of his birth were roughly estimated in proximity to contemporary figures. Key references to Euclid were written centuries after he lived, by Proclus and Pappus of Alexandria.

All of Euclid’s books follow a unique logical structure. They all have definitions and proved propositions in them.

Elements written by Euclid are one of the most influential works in the history of mathematics. It consists of the principles now called Euclidean Geometry’ which were deduced from a small set of axioms. Though these principles were known to the earlier mathematicians, it was Euclid who presented it in a single, logically coherent framework making it easy to use and refer.

Elements consist of 13 books. Books I - IV and VI discuss plane geometry; books V and VII - X deal with number theory, while hooks Xl- XIII discuss solid geometry.

Elements though known for geometry, also contains number theory. It deals with the between perfect numbers and mersenne primes, the infinitude of prime numbers, Euclid’s lemma on factorization (fundamental theorem of arithmetic) and the Euclidean algorithm to find the greatest common divisor of two numbers.

His Other Works:

Data: It’s a book on the nature and implications of given information in geometrical problems.

Division of Figures: This book is only partly available in Arabic. It discusses about the division of geometrical figures into two or more equal parts or into parts in given ratio.

Phaenomena: a treatise on spherical astronomy and Optics, an earliest Greek treatise on perspective.

Euclid has also contributed to the fields of conic sections and reasoning In addition to number theory.

Euclidean Geometry: Euclid used an approach called the synthetic approach” to present his theorems. Using this method, one progresses in a series of logical steps from the known to the unknown.