History Of Geometry

GEOMETRY
 Derived from the Greek words geô, “earth”, and metrein, “to measure”.
 It is an accurate description of the works of the earliest geometers, who were concerned
with problems such as measuring the size of fields and laying out accurate right angles for
the corners of buildings.
 A branch of mathematics that deals with shapes and sizes. Geometry may be thought of as
the science of space.

 HISTORY OF GEOMETRY

ANCIENT GREEK GEOMETRY

 Thales of Miletus
 One of the seven pre-Socratic Sages.
 Thales is credited with several simple but important theorems, including the proof that an
angle inscribed in a semicircle is a right angle. (Thales Theorem)
 First to demonstrate the truth of a geometric relation-ship by showing that it followed in
a logical, orderly fashion from a set of universally accepted statements, called postulates
or axioms.
 Pythagoras of Samos
 Considered the first true mathematician.
 Emphasized the study of mathematics as a means to understanding all relationships in the
natural world.
 Pythagorean Theorem
 Hippocrates of Chios
 Wrote the first "Elements of Geometry“.
 Includes geometric solutions to quadratic equations and early methods of integration.
 Squaring the circle & the lune.
 Hippocrates was also the first to show that the ratio of the areas of two circles was equal
to the ratio of the squares of their radii.
 Plato
 "The Academy“ (387 BC-529 AD)
 Emphasized the idea of 'proof' and insisted on accurate definitions and clear hypotheses.
 Theaetetus of Athens
 Creator of Solid Geometry
 Study the octahedron and the icosahedron
 Construct all five regular solids.
 His work formed Book X and XIII of Euclid’s “Elements”.
 Eudoxus of Cnidus
 Developed a theory of proportion.
 Did early work on integration using his method of exhaustion by which he determined the
area of circles and the volumes of pyramids and cones. (1st seed of Calculus)
 Menaechmus
 Discovered the conic sections
  First to show that ellipses, parabolas, and hyperbolas are obtained by cutting a cone in a
plane not parallel to the base.
 Euclid of Alexandria
 13 Book treatise "The Elements“
 A collection of the theorems of Pythagoras, Hippocrates, Theaetetus, Eudoxus and other
predecessors into a logically connected whole.
 Archimedes of Syracuse
 Greatest of Greek mathematicians.
 The volume of a sphere is two-thirds the volume of its circumscribed cylinder
 Accurate approximations to pi and square roots.
 Apollonius of Perga
 The Great Geometer
 "Conics" - 8 Books
 Determined the center of curvature and the evolute of the ellipse, parabola, & hyperbola.
 Construct the circle which is tangent to three objects (points, lines or circles).
 Hipparchus of Rhodes
 Used and documented the foundations of trigonometry.
 Published several books of trigonometric tables & the methods for calculating them.
 Divide circles into 360 degrees (each degree divided into 60 min.)
 Heron of Alexandria
 "Metrica" (3 Books) which gives methods for computing areas and volumes
 Heron’s formula – a formula in finding the area of a triangle given a, b, and c.
 Menelaus of Alexandria
 Developed spherical geometry in his only surviving work "Sphaerica" (3 Books).
 "Menelaus's Theorem“- about how a straight line cuts the three sides of a triangle in
proportions whose product is (-1).
 Claudius Ptolemy
 "Almagest" (13 Books) - geocentric theory of planetary motion
 "Ptolemy's Theorem", states that for a quadrilateral inscribed in a circle, the product of
its diagonals is equal to the sum of the products of its opposite sides.
 Pappus of Alexandria
 Last of the great Greek geometers
 "Synagoge“: arithmetic, mean proportionals, geometrical paradoxes, regular polyhedra, the
spiral and quadratrix
 "Pappus' Theorem" - forms the basis of modern projective geometry
 Hypatia of Alexandria
 1st woman to make a substantial contribution to the development of mathematics
 Wrote an eleven part commentary on Ptolemy's Almagest, and a new version of Euclid's
Elements.

THE MIDDLE AGES

 Advances in geometry were made largely by Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa
and Hindus in India.
 Most of the works of Greek mathematics were scattered or lost.
 Some were translated and studied by the Muslims and Hindus.
 Aryabhata, an Indian mathematician, rediscovered the formula for the area of an isosceles
triangle.
 Aryabhata determined the value of pi with remarkable accuracy to four decimal places,
setting it equal to 62832/20000 or 3.1416.
 During the 12th and 13th centuries Elements was translated from Greek and Arabic into
Latin and the modern European languages, and geometry was added to the curriculum of
monastery schools.

17TH & 18TH CENTURY TO MODERN GEOMETRY

 Rene Descartes
 La Geometrie (1637 Manuscript) – applied algebra to geometry and created analytic
geometry.
 Believed science and mathematics could explain and predict events in the physical world.
 Developed the Cartesian coordinate system for graphing equations and geometric shapes.
 Girard Desargues
 Invented perspective geometry.
 Published his famous “Desargues’ Theorem” for two triangles in perspective, which later
evolved into projective geometry.
 Pierre de Fermat
 Recognized as an independent co-creator of analytic geometry
 Developed a method for determining maxima, minima and tangents to curved lines
foreshadowing calculus.
 Blaise Pascal
 Co-inventor of modern projective geometry
 Proved many projective geometry theorems, the earliest including "Pascal's mystic
hexagon" (1639).
 Giovanni Saccheri
 Italian Jesuit who did important early work on non-euclidean geometry
 Leonhard Euler
 Greatest modern mathematician
 Founded mathematical analysis, and invented mathematical functions, differential
equations, and the calculus of variations.
 Euler, Monge, and Gauss are considered the three fathers of differential geometry.
 “Euler’s Formula” (𝑒 𝑖𝑥 = cos x + i sin x) & “Euler’s Identity” (𝑒 iπ+ 1 = 0)
 In 1766, Euler became almost totally blind.
 He published over 800 papers and books, and his collected works fill 25,000 pages in 79
volumes.
 Gaspard Monge
 Considered the father of both descriptive geometry & differential geometry
 Introduced the concept of lines of curvature on a surface in 3-space.
 Carl Friedrich Gauss
 Contributed to many areas of math, including probability theory, algebra, and geometry
 Proved that every polynomial has at least one root, or solution (the fundamental theory of
algebra)
 Nikolai Lobachevsky
  Published the first account of non-Euclidean geometry to appear in print.
 Instead of trying to prove Euclid’s 5th axiom, he studied the concept of a geometry in
which that axiom may not be true.
 Janos Bolyai
 A pioneer of non-Euclidean geometry
 He left more than 20000 pages of mathematical manuscripts, which are now in a Hungarian
library.
 Jean-Victor Poncelet
 One of the founders of modern projective geometry
 Coined the term “projective geometry”
 Hermann Grassmann
 Creator of vector analysis and the vector interior (dot) and exterior (cross) products
 He invented what is now called the n-dimensional exterior algebra in differential geometry.
 Arthur Cayley
 An amateur mathematician who unified Euclidean, non-Euclidean, projective, and metrical
geometry.
 Introduced algebraic invariance, and the abstract groups of matrices and quaternions
 Bernhard Riemann
 Next great developer of differential geometry
 Developed geodesic coordinate systems and curvature tensors in n-dimensions.
 Felix Klein
 Connections between geometry and group theory.
 "Erlanger Programm" (1872) - synthesized geometry as the study of invariants under
groups of transformations
 "Klein Bottle"
 David Hilbert
 "Grundlagen der Geometrie“ - put geometry in a formal axiomatic setting based on 21
axioms.
 Tried to establish a consistent basis for all of mathematics, but later mathematicians
showed that this was impossible.

REFERENCES:
 Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation.
 http://geomhistory.com/html/modern_geometry.html