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BIOGRAPHIES OF GREAT SCIENTISTS
Euclid. Biography of a scientist
Directory / Biographies of great scientists
Almost nothing is known about the life of this scientist. Only a few legends about him have come down to us. The first commentator on the "Beginnings" Proclus (XNUMXth century AD) could not indicate where and when Euclid was born and died. According to Proclus, "this learned man" lived during the reign of Ptolemy I. Some biographical data are preserved on the pages of an Arabic manuscript of the XII century: Syrian, native of Tyre. One of the legends tells that King Ptolemy decided to study geometry. But it turned out that this is not so easy to do. Then he called Euclid and asked him to show him an easy way to mathematics. "There is no royal road to geometry," the scientist answered him. So, in the form of a legend, this expression, which has become popular, has come down to us. King Ptolemy I, in order to glorify his state, attracted scientists and poets to the country, creating for them the temple of the muses - Museion. There were study rooms, a botanical and zoological garden, an astronomical study, an astronomical tower, rooms for solitary work, and most importantly, a magnificent library. Among the invited scientists was Euclid, who founded a mathematical school in Alexandria, the capital of Egypt, and wrote his fundamental work for its students. It was in Alexandria that Euclid founded a mathematical school and wrote a great work on geometry, united under the general title "Beginnings" - the main work of his life. It is believed to have been written around 325 BC. The predecessors of Euclid - Thales, Pythagoras, Aristotle and others did a lot for the development of geometry. But all these were separate fragments, not a single logical scheme. Both contemporaries and followers of Euclid were attracted by the systematic and logical nature of the information presented. "Beginnings" consists of thirteen books, built according to a single logical scheme. Each of the thirteen books begins with a definition of the concepts (point, line, plane, figure, etc.) that are used in it, and then, based on a small number of basic provisions (5 axioms and 5 postulates), accepted without proof, the whole system is built geometry. At that time, the development of science did not imply the existence of methods of practical mathematics. Books I-IV covered geometry, and their content was traced back to the works of the Pythagorean school. In book V, the doctrine of proportions was developed, which was adjacent to Eudoxus of Cnidus. Books VII-IX contained the doctrine of numbers, representing the development of the Pythagorean primary sources. Books X-XII contain definitions of areas in the plane and space (stereometry), the theory of irrationality (especially in Book X); book XIII contains studies of regular bodies, going back to Theaetetus. Euclid's "Elements" is a presentation of that geometry, which is known to this day under the name of Euclidean geometry. It describes the metric properties of the space that modern science calls the Euclidean space. Euclidean space is the arena of physical phenomena of classical physics, the foundations of which were laid by Galileo and Newton. This space is empty, boundless, isotropic, having three dimensions. Euclid gave mathematical certainty to the atomistic idea of empty space in which atoms move. Euclid's simplest geometric object is the point, which he defines as something that has no parts. In other words, a point is an indivisible atom of space. The infinity of space is characterized by three postulates: "A straight line can be drawn from any point to any point." "A bounded straight line can be continuously extended along a straight line." "From every center and every solution a circle can be described." The doctrine of parallels and the famous fifth postulate ("If a line falling on two lines forms interior and on one side angles less than two lines, then these two lines extended indefinitely will meet on the side where the angles are less than two lines") define the properties of Euclidean space and its geometry, different from non-Euclidean geometries. It is usually said of the "Beginnings" that after the Bible it is the most popular written monument of antiquity. The book has a very interesting history. For two thousand years, it was a reference book for schoolchildren, used as an elementary course in geometry. The Elements were extremely popular, and many copies were made of them by industrious scribes in various cities and countries. Later, "Beginnings" moved from papyrus to parchment, and then to paper. Over the course of four centuries, the "Beginnings" were published 2500 times: on average, 6-7 editions were published annually. Until the XNUMXth century, the book was considered the main textbook on geometry, not only for schools, but also for universities. The "beginnings" of Euclid were thoroughly studied by the Arabs, and later by European scientists. They have been translated into the main world languages. The first originals were printed in 1533 in Basel. Curiously, the first translation into English, dating back to 1570, was made by Henry Billingway, a London merchant. Euclid owns partly preserved, partly reconstructed later mathematical works. It was he who introduced an algorithm for obtaining the greatest common divisor of two arbitrary natural numbers and an algorithm called the "sieve of Eratosthenes" for finding prime numbers up to a given number. Euclid laid the foundations of geometric optics, which he outlined in the works "Optics" and "Katoptrik". The basic concept of geometric optics is a rectilinear light beam. Euclid argued that the light beam comes from the eye (the theory of visual rays), which is not essential for geometric constructions. He knows the law of reflection and the focusing action of a concave spherical mirror, although he cannot yet determine the exact position of the focus. In any case, in the history of physics, the name of Euclid, as the founder of geometric optics, has taken its proper place. In Euclid, we also find a description of the monochord - a single-string instrument for determining the pitch of a string and its parts. It is believed that Pythagoras invented the monochord, and Euclid only described it ("Division of the Canon", III century BC). Euclid, with his characteristic passion, took up the numeral system of interval relations. The invention of the monochord was significant for the development of music. Gradually, instead of one string, two or three began to be used. This was the beginning of the creation of keyboard instruments, first the harpsichord, then the piano. And the root cause of the appearance of these musical instruments was mathematics. Of course, all the features of the Euclidean space were not discovered immediately, but as a result of the centuries-old work of scientific thought, but the starting point of this work was the "Beginnings" of Euclid. Knowledge of the foundations of Euclidean geometry is now a necessary element of general education throughout the world. Author: Samin D.K.
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