By: Darion Keyes

Nothing is known about Euclid’s life except what the Greek philosopher Proclus said in his reports “summary” of famous Greek mathematicians. In this book he says Euclid taught at Alexandria in the time of Ptolemy who ruled over Egypt from 323 to 285 BC. Medieval Enthusiasts often Mixed him up with the philosopher Eukleides. He lived in the same period of time as Plato. about a century before, and therefore he was called Megarensis. PtolemyProclus

 In addition to the Elements, Other works of Euclid is the Data, On Divisions of Figures, Phenomena, and Optics. All are prescribed in the original Greek except for Divisions, which is only partially saved but only in Arabic. These works all follow the basic structure of the Elements, having definitions and done carefully and with a lot of attention to detail.

His Elements is one of the most important works in the history of Math, used as a stepping stone for the main textbook for teaching math (especially geometry) from the time of its making until the late 19th or early 20th century. In the Elements, Euclid said the principles of what is now called Euclidean geometry from a small set of axioms (starting point of reasoning). Euclid also wrote works on perspective, conic sections, spherical geometry, and number theory.

 Although many of the results in Elements was from other earlier mathematicians, one of Euclid's accomplishments was to make them in a single, organized framework, making it easy to use and easy to reference, it also included a system of mathematical proofs that remains the basis of mathematics to this day. There is no mention of Euclid in the earliest remaining copies of the Elements, and most of the copies say they are "from the edition of Theon. The only reference that historians rely on of Euclid writing the Elements, was from Proclus.

 Euclid died in 275. BC. Even though he left a great legacy to history on math, he left a much greater mark as a teacher. He presented the theorems and problems with great clarity, showed the solutions concisely and logically, and his Elements has remained a standard geometry text for more than two thousand years since his death.