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Conics — Apollonius of Perga

~200 BC · Transmission: Silenced
MathematicsTreatiseGreek

Apollonius of Perga writes the Conics in 8 books (7 survive: 4 in Greek, 3 in Arabic; the eighth lost), systematizing and extending the prior knowledge of Menaechmus and Euclid on conic sections. He coins the terms 'ellipse,' 'parabola,' and 'hyperbola' still in use today. He demonstrates that the three curves are obtained by sectioning a single double cone with planes of different inclinations. Kepler directly applies Apollonius's conics to formulate his laws of planetary motion (1609): orbits are ellipses because Apollonius defined the ellipse. The recovery of the Arabic text in the Renaissance (Borelli, 1661) and its European rediscovery formed the geometric basis of the scientific revolution.

InstitutionLibrary of Alexandria and University of Pergamon
Historical regionPtolemaic Alexandria and Pergamon (present-day Egypt and Turkey)
Primary sourceΚωνικά (Conics), Apollonius of Perga, c. 200 BC — critical edition: J.L. Heiberg, Teubner, 1891-1893; English translation: R. Catesby Taliaferro, Britannica Great Books, 1952
Secondary sourceMacTutor — mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Apollonius/; Britannica — britannica.com/biography/Apollonius-of-Perga
Original languageHellenistic Greek
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