Ancient Greek mathematician Euclid: biography of the scientist, discoveries and interesting facts

We invite you to get acquainted with such a great mathematician as Euclid. Biography, a brief summary of his main work and some interesting facts about this scientist are presented in our article. Euclid (years of life - 365-300 BC) is a mathematician related to the Hellenistic era. He worked in Alexandria under Ptolemy I Soter. There are two main versions of where he was born. According to the first - in Athens, according to the second - in Tire (Syria).

Biography of Euclid: interesting facts

About the life of this scientist is not known so much. There is a message belonging to Pappus of Alexandria. This man was a mathematician who lived in the second half of the 3rd century AD. He noted that the scientist of interest was kind and soft with all those who could somehow contribute to the development of certain mathematical sciences.

There is also a legend, which Archimedes reported. Her main character is Euclid. A short biography for children usually includes this legend, since it is very curious and can cause interest in this mathematics from young readers. It says that King Ptolemy wanted to study geometry. However, it turned out that it is not easy to do it. Then the king called on the scholar Euclid and asked him if there was any easy way to comprehend this science. But Euclid replied that there is no geometry to the geometry. So this expression, which has become winged, has come down to us in the form of a legend.

In the early 3rd century BC. E. Founded the Alexandria Museum and the Alexandria Library Euclid. A brief biography and his discoveries are connected with these two institutions, which at the same time were also training centers.

Euclid is a pupil of Plato

This scientist went through the Academy, founded by Plato (his portrait is presented below). He mastered the main philosophical idea of this thinker, which consisted in the fact that there is an independent world of ideas. One can say with certainty that Euclid, whose biography is skimpy in details, was a Platonist in philosophy. Such an attitude strengthened the scientist in the understanding that all that is created and set forth by him in his "Elements" has an eternal existence.

The thinker we are interested in was born 205 years later than Pythagoras, 63 years - Plato, 33 - Eudoxus, 19 - Aristotle. He became acquainted with their philosophical and mathematical works either independently or through intermediaries.

The connection between "Elements" of Euclid and the works of other scientists

Prokle Diadoch, a philosopher-neo-platonist (years of life - 412-485), the author of comments on the "Principles", suggested that this work reflects the cosmology of Plato and the "Pythagorean Doctrine ...". In his work, Euclid laid out the theory of the golden section (books 2 nd, 6 th and 13 th) and regular polyhedra (Book 13). Being an adherent of Platonism, the scientist understood that his "Principles" contribute to the cosmology of Plato and to the ideas developed by his predecessors about the numerical harmony that characterizes the universe.

Not only Proclus Dijado appreciated the Platonic bodies and the golden section. Johannes Kepler (years of life - 1571-1630) was also interested in them. This German astronomer noted that in geometry there are 2 treasures - this is the golden section (the division of the segment in the middle and the extreme ratio) and the Pythagorean theorem. The value of the last of them, he compared with gold, and the first - with a precious stone. Johannes Kepler used Platonic solids in the creation of his cosmological hypothesis.

The value of "Start"

The book "Beginnings" is the basic composition that Euclid created. The biography of this scientist, of course, is marked by other works, which we will discuss at the end of the article. It should be noted that the works entitled "The Beginning," in which all the most important facts of theoretical arithmetic and geometry were presented, were also compiled by his predecessors. One of them is Hippocrates of Chios, a mathematician who lived in the 5th century BC. E. February (the second half of the 4th century BC) and Leont (4th century BC) also wrote books with this name. However, with the advent of the Euclidean "Elements", all these works were superseded from everyday life. The book of Euclid was the basic textbook on geometry for more than 2 thousand years. The scientist, creating his work, used many achievements of his predecessors. Euclid processed the available information and brought the material together.

In his book, the author summed up the development of mathematics in Ancient Greece and created a solid foundation for further discoveries. This is the meaning of Euclid's main work for world philosophy, mathematics and all science in general. It would be incorrect to believe that it consists in strengthening the mysticism of Plato and Pythagoras in their pseudo-creation.

Many scientists appreciated the "Principle" of Euclid, including Albert Einstein. He noted that this is an amazing work that gave the mind of a person the self-confidence necessary for further activity. Einstein said that the man who did not admire this creation in his youth was not born for theoretical research.

Axiomatic method

It should be noted separately the significance of the work of the scientist of interest to us in the brilliant demonstration of the axiomatic method in his "Principles." This method in modern mathematics is the most serious of those used to substantiate theories. In mechanics, it is also widely used. The great scientist Newton constructed the "Principle of Natural Philosophy" following the pattern of work that Euclid created.

The biography of the author of interest to us continues with a description of the main provisions of his main work.

The main provisions of the "Beginnings"

The book "Beginnings" systematically describes Euclidean geometry. Its coordinate system is based on such concepts as a plane, a straight line, a point, a movement. The relationships that are used in it are as follows: "the point is located on a straight line lying on a plane" and "the point is located between two other points".

The system of positions of Euclidean geometry, presented in the present exposition, is usually divided into 5 groups of axioms: motion, order, continuity, combination and parallelism of Euclid.

In thirteen books of "Beginnings" the scientist presented both arithmetic, stereometry, planimetry, relations according to Eudoxus. It should be noted that the exposition in this work is strictly deductive. Definitions each book of Euclid begins, and in the first of them follows the axioms and postulates. Then there are sentences that are divided into problems (where it is necessary to construct something) and theorems (where you need to prove something).

The lack of mathematics in Euclid

The main drawback is that the axiomatics of this scientist is devoid of completeness. There are no axioms of motion, continuity and order. Therefore, the scientist often had to trust the eye, resort to intuition. Books 14 and 15 are later additions to the work, whose author is Euclid. His biography is only very brief, therefore it is impossible to say exactly whether the first 13 books were created by one person or are the fruit of the collective work of the school supervised by the scientist.

Further development of science

The appearance of Euclidean geometry is associated with the emergence of visual representations of the world surrounding us (rays of light, strings stretched as illustrations of straight lines, etc.). Then they went deeper, which gave rise to a more abstract understanding of science such as geometry. NI Lobachevsky (years of life - 1792-1856) - a Russian mathematician, who made an important discovery. He noted that there is a geometry that is different from Euclidean. This changed the views of scientists about space. It turned out that they are by no means a priori. In other words, the geometry set forth in Euclid's Elements can not be considered the only describing property of the space surrounding us. The development of natural science (primarily astronomy and physics) has shown that it describes its structure only with a certain precision. In addition, it can not be applied to the entire space as a whole. Euclidean geometry is the first approximation to the understanding and description of its structure.

By the way, the fate of Lobachevsky was tragic. He was not accepted in the scientific world for his bold thoughts. However, the struggle of this scientist was not in vain. The triumph of Lobachevsky's ideas was provided by Gauss, the correspondence of which was published in the 1860's. Among the letters were the enthusiastic reviews of the scientist about the geometry of Lobachevsky.

Other works of Euclid

Very much of interest in our time is the biography of Euclid as a scientist. In mathematics, he made important discoveries. This is confirmed by the fact that since 1482 the book "Nachala" has withstood more than 500 publications in various languages of the world. However, the biography of Euclid's mathematics is marked by the creation of not only this book. He owns a number of works on optics, astronomy, logic, music. One of them is the "Data" book, which describes the conditions that make it possible to consider "a given" mathematical maximum image. Another work of Euclid is a book on optics, which contains information about the perspective. The scientist who was interested in us wrote an essay on catoptric literature (he set forth in this work the theory of distortions arising in mirrors). The book of Euclid called "The division of figures" is also known. Work on mathematics "On false conclusions", unfortunately, has not survived.

So, you met such a great scientist as Euclid. I hope that your brief biography turned out to be useful to you.