Euclid

There is no royal road to Geometry.

Euclid (Greek: Εὐκλείδης), also known as Euclid of Alexandria, was a Greek mathematician who flourished in Alexandria, Egypt, almost certainly during the reign of Ptolemy I (323–283 BC). Neither the year nor place of his birth have been established, nor the circumstances of his death. He is famous for writing one of the earliest comprehensive mathematics textbooks, the Elements.

Sourced

• And the whole [is] greater than the part.
  • Elements, Book I, Common Notions 5

• A prime number is one (which is) measured by a unit alone.
  • Elements, Book 7, Definitions 11

Quotes about Euclid

• Euclid's Elements is certainly one of the greatest books ever written, and one of the most perfect monuments of the Greek intellect.
  • Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, p. 211

Attributed

• There is no royal road to geometry.
  • Reply given when the ruler Ptolemy I Soter asked Euclid if there was a shorter road to learning geometry than through Euclid's Elements.
  • Proclus (412–485 AD) in Commentary on the First Book of Euclid's Elements as translated by Glenn R. Morrow (1970), p. 57.

• Give him a coin, since he must profit by what he learns.
  • Said to be a remark made to his servant when a student asked what he would get out of studying geometry.
  • A slightly different translation of this remark (in which the coin is anachronistically referred to as 'threepence') is mentioned in The History of Greek Mathematics by Thomas Little Heath (1921), p. 357, where it is attributed to Stobaeus' Floril. iv, p. 205 (Floril. iv refers to volume iv of Stobaeus' Florilegium). The original Greek version of the anecdote can be read here, where it is mentioned that Stobaeus is quoting Serenus, or in the digitized copy of Florilegium on the Internet Archive here (if read online, set the slider at the bottom to location 600/723 to see p. 205, where the quote appears under heading 114).

Misattributed

• The laws of nature are but the mathematical thoughts of God.
  • The earliest published source found on google books that attributes this to Euclid is A Mathematical Journey by Stanley Gudder (1994), p. xv. However, many earlier works attribute it to Johannes Kepler, the earliest located being in the piece "The Mathematics of Elementary Chemistry" by Principal J. McIntosh of Fowler Union High School in California, which appeared in School Science and Mathematics, Volume VII (1907), p. 383. Neither this nor any other source located gives a source in Kepler's writings, however, and in an earlier source, the 1888 Notes and Queries, Vol V., it is attributed on p. 165 to Plato. It could possibly be a paraphrase of either or both of the following to comments in Kepler's 1618 book Harmonices Mundi (The Harmony of the World)': "Geometry is one and eternal shining in the mind of God" and "Since geometry is co-eternal with the divine mind before the birth of things, God himself served as his own model in creating the world".

External links

• Brief profile
• Euclid's Elements (All thirteen books, with interactive diagrams using Java)
• First 10 Books of Euclid's Elements ( Greek and an English) (includes PDF version for printing)
• Elements at the Perseus Project