Treatise on Conic Sections
Edited in Modern Notation with Introductions, Including an Essay on the Earlier History of the Subject

Published in 1896, this translation of a classic work of Greek geometry uses modern notation and includes considerable introductory material.

Apollonius of Perga (Author), T. L. Heath (Edited by)

9781108062787, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 21 November 2013

434 pages, 101 b/w illus.
21.6 x 14 x 2.5 cm, 0.55 kg

Active in Alexandria in the third century BCE, Apollonius of Perga ranks as one of the greatest Greek geometers. Building on foundations laid by Euclid, he is famous for defining the parabola, hyperbola and ellipse in his major treatise on conic sections. The dense nature of its text, however, made it inaccessible to most readers. When it was originally published in 1896 by the civil servant and classical scholar Thomas Little Heath (1861–1940), the present work was the first English translation and, more importantly, the first serious effort to standardise the terminology and notation. Along with clear diagrams, Heath includes a thorough introduction to the work and the history of the subject. Seeing the treatise as more than an esoteric artefact, Heath presents it as a valuable tool for modern mathematicians. His works on Diophantos of Alexandria (1885) and Aristarchus of Samos (1913) are also reissued in this series.

Preface
List of principal authorities
Introduction: Part I. The Earlier History of Conic Sections among the Greeks
Part II. Introduction to The Conics of Apollonius
The Conics of Apollonius.

Subject Areas: History of mathematics [PBX]