Interesting facts about Euclid – The Father of Geometry

September 15, 2010 | In: People facts

The date and place of Euclid’s birth and the date and circumstances of his death are unknown, and only roughly estimated in proximity to contemporary figures mentioned in references.

Euclid was a 4th-3rd century BC Greek mathematician whose work served as the basis for modern geometry. Not much is known about this great European scientist, who moved to Alexandria, Egypt, to teach at the university and use its famous library.

Euclid’s studies were formulated into his textbook, “Elements of Geometry,” which has been described as “the most studied book apart from the Bible.”

His great contribution was a deductive method of proof. He proposed several assumptions about geometry, including the idea that for a line and a point not on that line, the only line that includes the point without intersecting the first line is a line parallel to the first line.

For more than 2000 years, Euclid’s text, which was 13 volumes long, was the book that introduced all schoolchildren to geometry. Today’s geometry textbooks include Euclidian geometry.