Euclid of Alexandria

Born: about 325 BC

Died: about 265 BC in Alexandria, Egypt

Euclid of Alexandria is the most prominent mathematician of antiquity best known for his treatise on mathematics The Elements. The long lasting nature of The Elements must make Euclid the leading mathematics teacher of all time. However little is known of Euclid's life except that he taught at Alexandria in Egypt. Proclus, the last major Greek philosopher, who lived around 450 AD wrote (see or or many other sources):-

Not much younger than these [pupils of Plato] is Euclid, who put together the "Elements", arranging in order many of Eudoxus's theorems, perfecting many of Theaetetus's, and also bringing to irrefutable demonstration the things which had been only loosely proved by his predecessors. This man lived in the time of the first Ptolemy; for Archimedes, who followed closely upon the first Ptolemy makes mention of Euclid, and further they say that Ptolemy once asked him if there were a shorted way to study geometry than the Elements, to which he replied that there was no royal road to geometry. He is therefore younger than Plato's circle, but older than Eratosthenes and Archimedes; for these were contemporaries, as Eratosthenes somewhere says. In his aim he was a Platonist, being in sympathy with this philosophy, whence he made the end of the whole "Elements" the construction of the so-called Platonic figures.

There is other information about Euclid given by certain authors but it is not thought to be reliable. Two different types of this extra information exists. The first type of extra information is that given by Arabian authors who state that Euclid was the son of Naucrates and that he was born in Tyre. It is believed by historians of mathematics that this is entirely fictitious and was merely invented by the authors.

The second type of information is that Euclid was born at Megara. This is due to an error on the part of the authors who first gave this information. In fact there was a Euclid of Megara, who was a philosopher who lived about 100 years before the mathematician Euclid of Alexandria. It is not quite the coincidence that it might seem that there were two learned men called Euclid. In fact Euclid was a very common name around this period and this is one further complication that makes it difficult to discover information concerning Euclid of Alexandria since there are references to numerous men called Euclid in the literature of this period.

Returning to the quotation from Proclus given above, the first point to make is that there is nothing inconsistent in the dating given. However, although we do not know for certain exactly what reference to Euclid in Archimedes' work Proclus is referring to, in what has come down to us there is only one reference to Euclid and this occurs in On the sphere and the cylinder. The obvious conclusion, therefore, is that all is well with the argument of Proclus and this was assumed until challenged by Hjelmslev in. He argued that the reference to Euclid was added to Archimedes book at a later stage, and indeed it is a rather surprising reference. It was not the tradition of the time to give such references, moreover there are many other places in Archimedes where it would be appropriate to refer to Euclid and there is no such reference. Despite Hjelmslev's claims that the passage has been added later, Bulmer-Thomas writes in:-

Although it is no longer possible to rely on this reference, a general consideration of Euclid's works ... still shows that he must have written after such pupils of Plato as Eudoxus and before Archimedes.

For further discussion on dating Euclid, see for example. This is far from an end to the arguments about Euclid the mathematician. The situation is best summed up by Itard  who gives three possible hypotheses.

(i) Euclid was an historical character who wrote the Elements and the other works attributed to him.

(ii) Euclid was the leader of a team of mathematicians working at Alexandria. They all contributed to writing the 'complete works of Euclid', even continuing to write books under Euclid's name after his death.

(iii) Euclid was not an historical character. The 'complete works of Euclid' were written by a team of mathematicians at Alexandria who took the name Euclid from the historical character Euclid of Megara who had lived about 100 years earlier.

It is worth remarking that Itard, who accepts Hjelmslev's claims that the passage about Euclid was added to Archimedes, favours the second of the three possibilities that we listed above. We should, however, make some comments on the three possibilities which, it is fair to say, sum up pretty well all possible current theories.

There is some strong evidence to accept (i). It was accepted without question by everyone for over 2000 years and there is little evidence which is inconsistent with this hypothesis. It is true that there are differences in style between some of the books of the Elements yet many authors vary their style. Again the fact that Euclid undoubtedly based the Elements on previous works means that it would be rather remarkable if no trace of the style of the original author remained.

Even if we accept (i) then there is little doubt that Euclid built up a vigorous school of mathematics at Alexandria. He therefore would have had some able pupils who may have helped out in writing the books. However hypothesis (ii) goes much further than this and would suggest that different books were written by different mathematicians. Other than the differences in style referred to above, there is little direct evidence of this.

Although on the face of it (iii) might seem the most fanciful of the three suggestions, nevertheless the 20th century example of Bourbaki shows that it is far from impossible. Henri Cartan, André Weil, Jean Dieudonné, Claude Chevalley, and Alexander Grothendieck wrote collectively under the name of Bourbaki and Bourbaki's Eléments de mathématique contains more than 30 volumes. Of course if (iii) were the correct hypothesis then Apollonius, who studied with the pupils of Euclid in Alexandria, must have known there was no person 'Euclid' but the fact that he wrote:-

.... Euclid did not work out the syntheses of the locus with respect to three and four lines, but only a chance portion of it ...

certainly does not prove that Euclid was an historical character since there are many similar references to Bourbaki by mathematicians who knew perfectly well that Bourbaki was fictitious. Nevertheless the mathematicians who made up the Bourbaki team are all well known in their own right and this may be the greatest argument against hypothesis (iii) in that the 'Euclid team' would have to have consisted of outstanding mathematicians. So who were they?

We shall assume in this article that hypothesis (i) is true but, having no knowledge of Euclid, we must concentrate on his works after making a few comments on possible historical events. Euclid must have studied in Plato's Academy in Athens to have learnt of the geometry of Eudoxus and Theaetetus of which he was so familiar.

None of Euclid's works have a preface, at least none has come down to us so it is highly unlikely that any ever existed, so we cannot see any of his character, as we can of some other Greek mathematicians, from the nature of their prefaces. Pappus writes (see for example) that Euclid was:-

... most fair and well disposed towards all who were able in any measure to advance mathematics, careful in no way to give offence, and although an exact scholar not vaunting himself.

Some claim these words have been added to Pappus, and certainly the point of the passage (in a continuation which we have not quoted) is to speak harshly (and almost certainly unfairly) of Apollonius. The picture of Euclid drawn by Pappus is, however, certainly in line with the evidence from his mathematical texts. Another story told by Stobaeus is the following:-

... someone who had begun to learn geometry with Euclid, when he had learnt the first theorem, asked Euclid "What shall I get by learning these things?" Euclid called his slave and said "Give him threepence since he must make gain out of what he learns".

Euclid's most famous work is his treatise on mathematics The Elements. The book was a compilation of knowledge that became the centre of mathematical teaching for 2000 years. Probably no results in The Elements were first proved by Euclid but the organisation of the material and its exposition are certainly due to him. In fact there is ample evidence that Euclid is using earlier textbooks as he writes the Elements since he introduces quite a number of definitions which are never used such as that of an oblong, a rhombus, and a rhomboid.

The Elements begins with definitions and five postulates. The first three postulates are postulates of construction, for example the first postulate states that it is possible to draw a straight line between any two points. These postulates also implicitly assume the existence of points, lines and circles and then the existence of other geometric objects are deduced from the fact that these exist. There are other assumptions in the postulates which are not explicit. For example it is assumed that there is a unique line joining any two points. Similarly postulates two and three, on producing straight lines and drawing circles, respectively, assume the uniqueness of the objects the possibility of whose construction is being postulated.

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