Ancient Greek mathematician Euclid was born around 365 B.C. in Alexandria, Egypt. We know almost nothing about his personal life, but we all know he was the father of geometry. That's because he wrote The Elements, the most widely used mathematics and geometry textbook in history. Euclid's Elements is the earliest example to discuss geometry in a systematic approach. It includes 23 definitions, 5 postulates, 5 common notions, and 48 propositions. Although many of these results had been stated by earlier mathematicians, none of them like Euclid showed these propositions as a comprehensive system. Euclid was the first one to see the whole picture of geometry.
Two poems are a tribute to Euclid's work. Because of his Elements, we changed the way of how we look at the world. To my understanding, Beauty in the poem represents the world, and Euclid was the only one who "looked on Beauty bare". Mathematicians before him have seen just a part of Beauty, and people after him have only heard a distant echo of Beauty's step. Euclid was the only one who knew how to see the world. With Euclid's Elements, can we see Beauty one day?
Very nice!
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