Timeline of ancient Greek mathematicians

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

This is a timeline of

mathematicians in ancient Greece
.

Timeline

Historians traditionally place the beginning of Greek mathematics proper to the age of Thales of Miletus (ca. 624–548 BC), which is indicated by the green line at 600 BC. The orange line at 300 BC indicates the approximate year in which Euclid's Elements was first published. The red line at 300 AD passes through Pappus of Alexandria (c. 290 – c. 350 AD), who was one of the last great Greek mathematicians of late antiquity. Note that the solid thick black line is at year zero, which is a year that does not exist in the Anno Domini (AD) calendar year system


Simplicius of CiliciaEutocius of AscalonAnicius Manlius Severinus BoethiusAnthemius of TrallesMarinus of NeapolisDomninus of LarissaProclusHypatiaTheon of AlexandriaSerenus of AntinoeiaPappus of AlexandriaSporus of NicaeaPorphyry (philosopher)DiophantusPtolemyTheon of SmyrnaMenelaus of AlexandriaNicomachusHero of AlexandriaCleomedesGeminusPosidoniusZeno of SidonTheodosius of BithyniaPerseus (geometer)HypsiclesHipparchusZenodorus (mathematician)Diocles (mathematician)DionysodorusApollonius of PergaEratosthenesPhilonConon of SamosChrysippusArchimedesAristarchus of SamosEuclidAutolycus of PitaneCallippusAristaeus the ElderMenaechmusDinostratusXenocratesEudoxus of CnidusThymaridasTheaetetus (mathematician)ArchytasBryson of HeracleaDemocritusHippiasTheodorus of CyreneHippocrates of ChiosOenopidesZeno of EleaAnaxagorasHippasusPythagorasThales of Miletus

The mathematician Heliodorus of Larissa is not listed due to the uncertainty of when he lived, which was possibly during the 3rd century AD, after Ptolemy.

Overview of the most important mathematicians and discoveries

Of these mathematicians, those whose work stands out include:

  • Thales' theorem. He is the first known individual to whom a mathematical discovery has been attributed.[1]
  • Pythagoras (c. 570 – c. 495 BC) was credited with many mathematical and scientific discoveries, including the Pythagorean theorem, Pythagorean tuning, the five regular solids, the Theory of Proportions, the sphericity of the Earth, and the identity of the morning and evening stars as the planet Venus.
  • tetrahedron (of the fifth Platonic solid, the dodecahedron, Plato obscurely remarked, "...the god used [it] for arranging the constellations on the whole heaven"). The last book (Book XIII) of the Euclid's Elements, which is probably derived from the work of Theaetetus, is devoted to constructing the Platonic solids and describing their properties; Andreas Speiser has advocated the view that the construction of the 5 regular solids is the chief goal of the deductive system canonized in the Elements.[2] Astronomer Johannes Kepler proposed a model of the Solar System
    in which the five solids were set inside one another and separated by a series of inscribed and circumscribed spheres.
  • Eudoxus of Cnidus (c. 408 – c. 355 BC) is considered by some to be the greatest of classical Greek mathematicians, and in all antiquity second only to Archimedes.[3] Book V of Euclid's Elements is thought to be largely due to Eudoxus.
  • Aristarchus of Samos (c. 310 – c. 230 BC) presented the first known heliocentric model that placed the Sun at the center of the known universe with the Earth revolving around it. Aristarchus identified the "central fire" with the Sun, and he put the other planets in their correct order of distance around the Sun.[4] In On the Sizes and Distances, he calculates the sizes of the Sun and Moon, as well as their distances from the Earth in terms of Earth's radius. However, Eratosthenes (c. 276 – c. 194/195 BC) was the first person to calculate the circumference of the Earth. Posidonius (c. 135 – c. 51 BC) also measured the diameters and distances of the Sun and the Moon as well as the Earth's diameter; his measurement of the diameter of the Sun was more accurate than Aristarchus', differing from the modern value by about half.
  • Euclid (fl. 300 BC) is often referred to as the "founder of geometry"[5] or the "father of geometry" because of his incredibly influential treatise called the Elements, which was the first, or at least one of the first, axiomatized deductive systems.
  • physical phenomena, founding hydrostatics and statics, including an explanation of the principle of the lever. In a lost work, he discovered and enumerated the 13 Archimedean solids, which were later rediscovered by Johannes Kepler
    around 1620 A.D.
  • Apollonius of Perga (c. 240 – c. 190 BC) is known for his work on conic sections and his study of geometry in 3-dimensional space. He is considered one of the greatest ancient Greek mathematicians.
  • Hipparchus (c. 190 – c. 120 BC) is considered the founder of trigonometry[9] and also solved several problems of spherical trigonometry. He was the first whose quantitative and accurate models for the motion of the Sun and Moon survive. In his work On Sizes and Distances, he measured the apparent diameters of the Sun and Moon and their distances from Earth. He is also reputed to have measured the Earth's precession.
  • rhetorical algebra
    " or ancient Greek "geometric algebra" (the ancient Greeks had expressed and solved some particular instances of algebraic equations in terms of geometric properties such as length and area but they did not solve such problems in general; only particular instances). An example of "geometric algebra" is: given a triangle (or rectangle, etc.) with a certain area and also given the length of some of its sides (or some other properties), find the length of the remaining side (and justify/prove the answer with geometry). Solving such a problem is often equivalent to finding the roots of a polynomial.

Hellenic mathematicians

The conquests of

Alexandria, Egypt
. Regardless, their contemporaries considered them Greek.

Straightedge and compass constructions

Creating a regular hexagon with a straightedge and compass

For the most part, straightedge and compass constructions dominated ancient Greek mathematics and most theorems and results were stated and proved in terms of geometry. These proofs involved a straightedge (such as that formed by a taut rope), which was used to construct lines, and a compass, which was used to construct circles. The straightedge is an idealized ruler that can draw arbitrarily long lines but (unlike modern rulers) it has no markings on it. A compass can draw a circle starting from two given points: the center and a point on the circle. A taut rope can be used to physically construct both lines (since it forms a straightedge) and circles (by rotating the taut rope around a point).

Geometric constructions using lines and circles were also used outside of the Mediterranean region. The

European colonization
.

Algebra

Ancient Greek mathematicians are known to have solved specific instances of polynomial equations with the use of straightedge and compass constructions, which simultaneously gave a geometric proof of the solution's correctness. Once a construction was completed, the answer could be found by measuring the length of a certain line segment (or possibly some other quantity). A quantity multiplied by itself, such as for example, would often be constructed as a literal square with sides of length which is why the second power "" is referred to as " squared" in ordinary spoken language. Thus problems that would today be considered "algebra problems" were also solved by ancient Greek mathematicians, although not in full generality. A complete guide to systematically solving low-order polynomials equations for an unknown quantity (instead of just specific instances of such problems) would not appear until

syncopated algebra that appeared in Arithmetica
.

See also

References