Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #83688 in Books
• Published on: 2000-02-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 464 pages

Customer Reviews

not for the faint of heart...
Euclid begins by stating a few a definitions and logical rules. 'A line is a breathless length' and 'Things that are equal to the same thing are equal to each other'. The proofs that follow are simple and elegant. The second flowing from the first in a natural sequence. But this is no higgledy piggledy random wandering.

In the first book the author leads the reader to Pythagoras theorem. Just as every statement Euclid makes is essential to the proof, every proof is essential to the book's goal. The clarity and beauty of this book is something to behold

Heath's commentary is a very interesting complement. He provides alternative ancient and modern proofs as well as notes on the historical development of the mathematics.

A word of warning - this book took me about six months to read. I was unable to follow the book without following the proofs with a compass, ruler etc. However, if you are prepared to put in the time the rewards are considerable.

One of the 10 great scientific books of the last 2000 years
This book is the foundation on which the mathematics is built. It is greatly enhanced by the translator's annotations. If you want to know what mathematics is all about, then you must have this book.

All Greek to Me.
Nobody with an interest in Geometry, or the history of Western Civilisation should be without a copy of this book. What you get is far more than just the theorems and proofs to be found in the first two books of Euclid. Indeed, if this is all you want, one of the online versions of Euclid will probably be more to your taste. The book contains a mass of scholarly but fascinating detail on topics such as Euclid's predecessors, contemporary reaction, commentaries by later Greek mathematicians, the work of Arab mathematicians inspired by Euclid, the transmission of the text back to Renaissance Europe, and a list and potted history of the various translations and editions of Euclid from then on. The section on the postulates and axioms (and of course the all-important parallel postulate) is wonderful.

When we come to the actual theorems the amount of detail is just as impressive - references to earlier results are annotated, and textual variations are noted (especially where the proofs may have been amended by later writers in an attempt to correct gaps). In many cases alternative proofs are given - sometimes several different ones, with the history and references for each.