Ancient Greek Mathematicians

Early civilizations were powerhouses of knowledge, research and expertise in nearly every realm or sphere of learning. One such civilization were the ancient Greeks, who lived in the time period between 8th and 6th centuries BC. Perhaps the very cradle, foundation, birthplace, whatever you may term it - the creation of Western civilization as we know and live in today, was born in this era of Greece. The ancient Greeks taught the world about politics and government, including how to rule countries based on states and regions. They created the concept of plays and drama, of philosophy and theology and of art in everything, be it buildings, sculptures or paintings. Their rich mythology, deities, legends, etc. influence and fascinate us, even today. And their contributions to the field of science and technology cannot be ignored, particularly in the field of mathematics.

Of all the world's most famous mathematicians, many noted and valuable mathematical solutions, theories and facts are thanks to the ancient Greeks. From the Pythagorean theorem to the distance between the sun and the earth and various geometrical observations, the contributions of ancient Greeks to the field of mathematics are indispensable. So in honor of such great minds and the fruits of their labor, that have made man what he is today. Below are some famous ancient Greek mathematicians along with their mathematical achievements.

List of Ancient Greek Mathematicians

Name	Born In	Died In	Area of Birth or Residence	Contributions to Mathematics
Archytas	428 BC	347 BC	Unknown	Founder of mathematical mechanics - using the concepts of maths in machines Inceptor of the idea of a harmonic mean Creator of the Archytas mean
Archimedes	287 BC	212 BC	Syracuse	Created the method of exhaustion Found out value of π (pi) Proved that area of a circle can be calculated by formula π x r 2(radius of circle) Created Archimedean property of real numbers Proved that area enclosed by a straight line and a parabola is 4/3 times the area of a triangle inscribed in the parabola
Chrysippus	279 BC	206 BC	Soli	Contributed to the concept of the infinite set Sole Greek mathematician to claim "one" is a numeral
Democritus	460 BC	370 BC	Abdera	Carried out predominant research into the geometric shapes of cones and pyramids Noted that a cone/pyramid has ⅓ volume of a cylinder or prism with same base and height measurements
Dionysodorus	250 BC	190 BC	Caunus	Credited with using the concept of an intersection between a hyperbola and a parabola to solve cubic equations, a previously unthought of idea Wrote On the Tore, mathematical work dealing with the geometric shape torus and its calculations
Diophantus	200 C.E	284 C.E	Alexandria	Wrote The Arithmetica series, a collection of 13 books which is thought to be the best written work on algebra Written books on polygonal numbers and various algebraic lemmas
Eratosthenes	276 BC	195 BC	Cyrene	Devised the Sieve of Eratosthenes, which is an algorithm for locating prime numbers from the numeral system Calculated the distance between the sun and the Earth, the tilt of the Earth's axis and the circumference of the Earth
Euclid	300 BC	Unknown	Alexandria	Father of geometry, collected geometric theories in a book called Euclid's Elements Collected and presented the various parts of Number theory Created Euclidean geometry and Euclid's lemma on factorization Proposed the Euclidean algorithm, which finds the GCD of 2 numerals
Hero or Heron	10 AD	70 AD	Alexandria	Created Hero's formula - area of a triangle can be calculated from its side lengths and semi-perimeter Invented a way to calculate square root iteratively First mathematician to observe the imaginary unit
Hippocrates	470 BC	410 BC	Isle of Chios	First mathematician to write a geometry textbook, Stoicheia Elements Created the lune of Hippocrates, a key geometrical figure Solved the issues associated with cube roots Invented the reduction method
Nicomedes	280 BC	210 BC	Unknown	Famous geometer, created the conchoid of Nicomedes Succeeded in finding out how to square a circle
Pappus	290 AD	350 AD	Alexandria	Proposed the Pappus hexagon theorem, Pappus's centroid theorem Created the Pappus chain, Pappus configuration and Pappus graph Compiled and wrote the Synagogue or Mathematical Collection, 8 books written about findings, theories and facts about Greek geometry
Pythagoras	570 BC	495 BC	Samos Island	Created the Pythagorean theorem - The sum of the squares of 2 sides of a right angled triangle is equal to the square of the hypotenuse Proposed that the planets and stars moved in accordance to math equations Created the Tetractys figure
Thales	624 or 625 BC	547 or 546 BC	Miletus	Used the concept of similar and right triangles to measure pyramids Used the method of seked to measure distances of ships at sea Created Thales's Theorem - right angle exists between any 3 points on a circle, where a line between 2 of those points is the circle's diameter

It's easy to see from the above list of achievements, that we and mathematics in general, have a lot to thank the ancient Greek mathematicians for. From teaching us the importance of collecting facts and knowledge in the written form of textbooks and works to studying what is around us to solve problems, truly the ancient Greek math minds are one of the founding and key contributors to the field of maths and indeed the progress of mankind on the whole.