1, Pythagoras
Pythagoras (about 580 BC-about 500 BC (490 BC)) was an ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher. Pythagoras was born in a noble family on Samos Island (an island in eastern Greece today) in the Aegean Sea. He was smart and studious since childhood, and studied geometry, natural science and philosophy with famous teachers.
Because I yearned for the wisdom of the East, I traveled to two ancient civilizations with high cultural level in the world at that time: Babylon and Egypt (controversial), and absorbed the civilization and culture of Mesopotamia. Later, he went to southern Italy to teach mathematics, publicize his philosophical thoughts, and formed a political and religious group called "Pythagoras School" with his followers.
Pythagoras is a little better than some scholars who opened the altar to give lectures in his contemporaries; Because he allows women (aristocratic women, of course not slave maids) to attend classes. He believes that women have the same right to seek knowledge as men, so there are more than a dozen female scholars in his school. This is a phenomenon that is not found in other schools.
2. Euclid.
Euclid was one of the most famous and influential mathematicians and scientists in ancient Greece. Euclid's Elements of Geometry has a great influence on the future development of geometry, mathematics and science, and on the whole way of thinking of westerners.
The Elements of Geometry is the pinnacle of the development of ancient Greek mathematics. Euclid arranged the rich achievements accumulated in Greek geometry since the 7th century BC in a rigorous logical system operation, making geometry an independent and deductive science.
His most famous book, The Elements of Geometry, is the foundation of European mathematics, which summarizes five postulates of plane geometry and is widely regarded as the most successful textbook in history. Euclid also wrote some works about perspective, conic curve, spherical geometry and number theory. Euclid used the axiomatic method. This method later became a model of establishing any knowledge system, and in almost two thousand years, it was regarded as a model of rigorous thinking that must be followed.
Besides the Elements of Geometry, he has many other works, but most of them have been lost. Five other works of Euclid have survived to this day. Like geometric elements, they all contain definitions and proofs.
The Materials is the only Greek pure geometry book except The Original, and its style is similar to the first six volumes of The Original, including 94 propositions. It should be pointed out that if some elements in the diagram are known, other elements can also be determined.
"On the Division of Numbers" has existing Latin and Arabic texts, and discusses dividing known numbers into equal or proportional parts by straight lines, similar to Alexander Heron's works.
Reflectometry discusses the mathematical theory of reflected light, especially images on plane and concave mirror. However, some people question whether this book was really written by Euclid, and the author may be Theon of Alexandria.
Phenomenon is a paper on spherical astronomy, and the existing Greek text. This book is similar to On the Sphere of Motion written by Otto Ricus of Lex.
Optics is one of the early works of geometric optics, with Greek text. This book mainly studies perspective and describes the incident angle and reflection angle of light. It is believed that vision is the result of the light from the eyes reaching the object. There are still some works that are not sure whether they belong to Euclid or not, and have been lost.
3. Archimedes
Archimedes (287 BC-2 BC12), a great philosopher, encyclopedic scientist, mathematician, physicist and mechanic in ancient Greece, was the founder of statics and hydrostatics and enjoyed the reputation of "the father of mechanics". Archimedes, Gauss and Newton are listed as the three greatest mathematicians in the world. Archimedes once said, "Give me a fulcrum and I can pry up the whole earth." ?
Archimedes established the basic principles of statics and hydrostatics. Several methods for finding the center of gravity of geometric figures are given, including the center of gravity of the figure surrounded by parabola and its parallel chords. Archimedes proved that the buoyancy of an object in a liquid is equal to the weight of the liquid it displaces. This result was later called Archimedes principle.
He also gave the criterion of equilibrium stability of a parabola rotating body floating in liquid. The machine invented by Archimedes has a water spiral to divert water, which can pull the lever pulley machine loaded with large ships to explain the earth-moon-sun running model of solar eclipse. But he thought that mechanical invention was lower than pure mathematics, so he didn't write a book on it. Archimedes also used continuous division to calculate the volume of ellipsoid, rotating projectile and so on. This method has the rudiment of integral calculation.