GeometryNumbers & Operations
Euclid
fl. c. 300 BC · Ancient Greece (Alexandria)
The first to weave geometry into an unbroken chain of proof
Almost nothing is known about Euclid the man, who worked in Alexandria around 300 BC. What he left behind — the Elements — starts from a handful of agreed-upon axioms and proves theorem after theorem, becoming the template for math textbooks for the next two thousand years. The line 'there is no royal road to geometry' is attributed to him.
Key contributions
- Built the axiomatic system of proof in the Elements
- Proved that the primes are infinite
- The Euclidean algorithm for the greatest common divisor