Euclid

Euclid, sometimes Euclid of Alexandria (^∗mid of the fourth century BC; †mid of the third century BC, Alexandria, Hellenistic Egypt), was a Greek mathematician – the founder of geometry.

Scientific Achievements

Euclid has made fundamental contributions to geometry, arithmetic, and theory of music. He summarized the geometry and arithmetic of Pythagoras; worked out the beginning of the theory of numbers, concepts of divisibility, and greatest common divisor; etc. One of his fundamental results was his fifth postulate of the plane geometry: the parallel postulate. In geometry after Euclid is named the Euclidean space which encompasses the two-dimensional Euclidean plane, the three-dimensional space of Euclidean geometry, and certain other spaces. The term Euclidean distinguishes these spaces from other types of spaces considered in modern geometry (e.g., the curved spaces within the Riemannian geometry). Euclidean spaces can be also generalized to higher than three dimensions.

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