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Description
John B. Little is the translator.
This is a translation of Book III of the Mathematical Collection by Pappus of Alexandria (ca. 290 - 350 CE) from the original Greek to English, following the edition of Friedrich Hultsch. While other books of the Mathematical Collection have been translated into English and short quotations from Book III have appeared in a number of places (see the Introduction), to my knowledge, no complete English translation of Book III has been published. Pappus was very influential as a sort of conduit between knowledge preserved from ancient Greek mathematics and European mathematicians in the Renaissance. This is evident here in the way Pappus discusses several solutions for the problem of the duplication of the cube in the first section of this book. The rest of Book III deals with a number of other problems in plane and solid geometry. The opening section is addressed to a certain Pandrosion, who was apparently a fellow teacher of mathematics in Alexandria, and the earliest female mathematician of whom any record has survived.
Publication Date
12-2023
Keywords
Mathematics, Greek--Early works to 1800; Mathematics--Early works to 1800; Mathematicae collectiones; Plane geometry; Solid geometry
Disciplines
Classics | Geometry and Topology
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
Repository Citation
Pappus of Alexandria and Little, John B., "Pappus of Alexandria, Book III of the Mathematical Collection" (2023). Holy Cross Bookshelf. 63.
https://crossworks.holycross.edu/hc_books/63