Encounters with Euclid: How an Ancient Greek Geometry Text Shaped the World
About this ebook
Euclid’s Elements of Geometry was a book that changed the world. In this sweeping history, Benjamin Wardhaugh traces how the ancient Greek text on mathematics – often hailed as the world’s first textbook – shaped two thousand years of art, philosophy and literature, as well as science and maths.
With stories of influence on every continent, and encounters with the likes of Ptolemy and Isaac Newton, Hobbes and Lewis Carroll, Wardhaugh gives dramatic life to the evolution of mathematics.
Previously published as The Book of Wonders
About the author
Benjamin Wardhaugh is a Fifty-pound Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. His research focuses on the history of numeracy and mathematics, and the ways mathematics influences and is a part of cultures. His work focuses mainly on topics in early modern Britain, including mathematical music theory in that period. He has taught in both the Mathematical Institute and the History Faculty. He is the author of Gunpowder and Geometry and Encounters with Euclid.
