Greek Mathematical Works, Volume I: Thales to Euclid

by Ivor Thomas (Translator)

The wonderful achievement of Greek mathematics is here illustrated in two volumes of selected mathematical works. Volume I contains: The divisions of mathematics; mathematics in Greek education; calculation; arithmetical notation and operations, including square root and cube root; Pythagorean arithmetic, including properties of numbers; square root of 2; proportion and means; algebraic equations; Proclus; Thales; Pythagorean geometry; Democritus; Hippocrates of Chios; duplicating the cube and squaring the circle; trisecting angles; Theaetetus; Plato; Eudoxus of Cnidus (pyramid, cone, etc.); Aristotle (the infinite, the lever); Euclid.

Volume II ("Loeb Classical Library no. 362") contains: Aristarchus (distances of sun and moon); Archimedes (cylinder, sphere, cubic equations; conoids; spheroids; spiral; expression of large numbers; mechanics; hydrostatics); Eratosthenes (measurement of the earth); Apollonius (conic sections and other works); later development of geometry; trigonometry (including Ptolemy's table of sines); mensuration: Heron of Alexandria; algebra: Diophantus (determinate and indeterminate equations); the revival of geometry: Pappus.

Genres: Mathematics, Science, Philosophy, Classics, Nonfiction, History Of Science

576 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1939

Reviews

[John Cairns · Rating 4 out of 5]

More than anything else, this book convinced me how clever the ancient Greeks were. I'm supposing I did geometry better when I was a schoolboy. I couldn't do advanced Maths at all then. There they were third century BC doing a helluva lot better than me now. I tried following the proofs though, yeah, yeah, skimming over the buts and the therefores, not getting quite a lot on conic sections etc and so forth, really deploring the scholar's saying 'as every schoolboy knows' when I didn't. I liked his other comment that Euclid's definition of a straight line isn't satisfactory and tried myself defining it by all its parts going undeviatingly in the same direction except there's two directions, isn't there? It's such a shame some ignorant Roman soldier didn't obey Marcellus' orders but killed Archimedes who was the greatest (though Euclid's pretty good too in summing it all up, and Pythagoras).