Treatise On Conic Sections

Reprint of the 1896 edition. Cloth. Oversized Octavo. clxx, 254 p. Very little is known about the life of Apollonius, the last great mathematician of antiquity. He was born at Perga in Pamphylia, southern Asia Minor, during the reign [247-222 b.c.] of Ptolemy Euergetes, King of Egypt. When he was quite young, Apllonius went to study at the school in Alexandria established by Euclid. Apollnius's fame in antiquity was based on his work on conics. His treatise on this subject consisted of eight books, of which seven have survived. Like most of the well-known Greek mathematicians, Apollonius was also a talented astronomer. The Conics was written book by book over a long period of time. The general preface to the work is given n Book 1. The first four books are an elementary introduction. These books are thus an extension of the earlier conics by other mathematicians such as Euclid. Since most of these results were already well known, one might expect Apollonius's presentation to be more co