Greatest Greek mathematician?

[Kyriakos]

Just a general question

I am very interested in the works of a number of ancient mathematicians, including Eratosthenes, Archimedes, Eukleid and Apollonios of Perga. (Pythagoras seems to have been the basis for most of geometry anyway).

I know little of any mathematicians during the Byzantine era, but there must have been many around, even if not as important as the old ones.

I haven't read almost anything about Constantine Caratheodory's work, just a few notes on his adiavatic states and hyperbolas in their examination. He was in contact with Einstein during the formation of the two theories of relativity.

Special note should be given to Theodoros of Cyrene, a contemporary of Socrates, and his eponymous spiral dealing with the square roots (and later linked to the golden ratio phi)

*

Also worth noting that Arachne obviously weaves in Phi

 

[BvBPL]

Archimedes with the giant ancient laser beam for the win.

 

[Borachio]

Just look what these guys did!

'Abd al-Hamīd ibn Turk (fl. 830) (quadratics)
Thabit ibn Qurra (826–901)
Abū Kāmil Shujā ibn Aslam (c. 850 – 930) (irrationals)
Sind ibn Ali
Abū Sahl al-Qūhī (c. 940–1000) (centers of gravity)
Abu'l-Hasan al-Uqlidisi (952 – 953) (arithmetic)
'Abd al-'Aziz al-Qabisi
Abū al-Wafā' Būzjānī (940 – 998) (spherical trigonometry)
Al-Karaji (c. 953 – c. 1029) (algebra, induction)
Abu Nasr Mansur (c. 960 – 1036) (spherical trigonometry)
Ibn Tahir al-Baghdadi (c. 980–1037) (irrationals)
Ibn al-Haytham (ca. 965–1040)
Abū al-Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī (973 – 1048) (trigonometry)
Omar Khayyam (1048–1131) (cubic equations, parallel postulate)
Ibn Yaḥyā al-Maghribī al-Samawʾal (c. 1130 – c. 1180)
Ibn Maḍāʾ (c. 1116 - 1196)
Sharaf al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (c. 1150–1215) (cubics)
Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (1201–1274) (parallel postulate)
Jamshīd al-Kāshī (c. 1380–1429) (decimals and estimation of the circle constant)

But Euclid is your only man.

 

[Kyriakos]

These men are Nihilists Arabists, there's nothing to be afraid of :/

 

[Borachio]

What's interesting about Arabic mathematicians is that they made very great progress in a very short space of time. And then abruptly stopped almost completely. All on account of one man. Whose name for the moment eludes me.

edit: Or maybe that's all wrong. Maybe it was the Mongol invasion that put paid to them. Or maybe something else entirely. But by the C12th it had come to an end. What? The Greater Occultation?

 

[Kyriakos]

The one who wrote that "The Incoherence of the Philosophers", i suppose

Later on Averoe wrote a dismissal of that work, titled "The Incoherence of the Incoherence", but the damage was done already and the Islamic world moved away from Greek philosophy/science.

 

[Angst]

To be fair, I think 500 years is a decent time frame.

 

[Kyriakos]

^Pretty close to the Greek ancient math golden era, if we assume it starts in the 6th century with Pythagoras. Maybe that one mostly lasted for less aeons (three or four).

 

[Tahuti]

The one who wrote that "The Incoherence of the Philosophers", i suppose

Later on Averoe wrote a dismissal of that work, titled "The Incoherence of the Incoherence", but the damage was done already and the Islamic world moved away from Greek philosophy/science.

Jamshid al-Kashi died 300 years after Al-Ghazali died.

Anyway, my answer for the OP would be Euclid, simply for his Elements.

 

[otaman1]

Did the Greeks have a zero? If not, then math would've been difficult for them.

 

[Kyriakos]

Did the Greeks have a zero? If not, then math would've been difficult for them.

There was a zero, which is why division was part of math (kind of difficult to have been there otherwise ).

Searching online in the past for other threads it was also mentioned that the ancient version of the zero was also widely used for astronomical calculations, such as the one about the moon and eclipses.

Wiki article on the zero:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_numerals#Zero

 

[Leoreth]

Don't know about greatest, but Pythagoras is certainly my favorite Greek mathematician.


Link to video.

 

[Kyriakos]

^Haters gonna hate

 

[Angst]

Don't know about greatest, but Pythagoras is certainly my favorite Greek mathematician.


Link to video.

Link to video.

 

[Leoreth]

^Haters gonna hate

Didn't you listen, I said favorite.

 

[Kyriakos]

Pythagoras> everyone else

Even now we base all of complicated geometric calculations on (in one way or another, not menially) dividing the forms to right-angled triangles or composites based on those. So without the pythagorean theorem there would be no examination of most volumes or surface areas. The man was probably the most crucial mathematician in this planet's bleak history

Also other fields of math are centered on his trigonometry, such as the presentation of complex numbers with their imaginary part set as the hypothenuse of a triangle, or similar devices.

 

[Borachio]

Huh!

Pythagoras would be nowhere without Euclid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclid's_Elements

 

[Kyriakos]

Eukleid's definitions are almost poetic in their perfection and laconism

From the wiki page on the Elements, original text:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclid's_Elements

 

[Leoreth]

Yeah, I agree that Euclid is more influential than Pythagoras as far as geometry is concerned.

 

[Kyriakos]

One of my favorite mathematicians:



I find Apollonios of Perga's (Perga was a village near Pergamon, where he later moved to) work on Conic sections to be extremely interesting. Even his definitions of the four conic sections (circle, ellipse, parabola, hyperbola) are highly innovative (he defined them by corresponding courses taken by squares and parallelograms to form the four parts of the conic section).



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollonius_of_Perga

Afaik his full work on Conics survives.