Euclid's Elements
The geometry textbook used for more than two thousand years
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Around 300 BC the Alexandrian mathematician Euclid gathered the geometry and number theory of his time into 13 books of definitions, axioms and proofs. The Elements is called the most successful textbook ever written and was used to teach geometry into the 20th century.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 3rd century BC
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Middle East
- 323 BC Death of Alexander the Great — 23 years earlier
- 312 BC Seleucus retakes Babylon: the Seleucid era — 12 years earlier
- 301 BC The Battle of Ipsus — 1 year earlier
Asia
- c. 322 BC Founding of the Maurya Empire — 22 years earlier
Americas
- c. 300 BC Maya script — same year
- c. 300 BC–150 El Mirador, capital of the Preclassic Maya — same year
Alive at the time
- Mencius (aged 72)
- Epicurus (aged 41)
- Chandragupta Maurya (aged 40)
- Euclid (aged 25)
- Ashoka (aged 4)
- Zhuangzi (aged 69)
- Ptolemy I Soter (aged 67)
- Pyrrho (aged 60)
- Pytheas (aged 50)
- Qu Yuan (aged 40)