Euclid
c. 325 BC – 270 BC · 55 years · Alexandria · Africa
Author of the Elements, the systematic treatment of geometry that served as the main mathematics textbook for 2,000 years.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 4th century BC
Portrait: Justus van Gent · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Archimedes — mathematician, physicist and engineer, 38 years younger
- Pytheas — Greek navigator and geographer, 25 years older
Africa
- Arsinoe II — queen of Ptolemaic Egypt, 9 years younger
- Ptolemy I Soter — founder of the Ptolemaic dynasty, 42 years older
Asia
- Mencius — Chinese Confucian philosopher, 47 years older
- Ashoka — Maurya emperor, 21 years younger
- Chandragupta Maurya — founder of the Maurya Empire, 15 years older
- Qu Yuan — Chinese poet and minister, 15 years older
- Zhuangzi — Chinese Taoist philosopher, 44 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 323 BC Death of Alexander the Great — aged 2, Middle East
- c. 322 BC Founding of the Maurya Empire — aged 3, Asia
- c. 300 BC Maya script — aged 25, Americas
- c. 285 BC Library of Alexandria — aged 40, Africa