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Of the life of ARISTAEUS no details have been preserved. But, from the notices of his work contained in Pappus, we find that he is one of the predecessors, and probably a senior contemporary, of Euclid. He wrote on the five regular Solids, and also on Conic Sections; the latter work being highly appreciated by Euclid. His work on the first of these subjects contained the theorem that when a dodecahedron and icosahedron, solids of 12 and 20 sides, were enclosed in the same sphere, the same circle circumscribes the pentagon of the former and the triangle of the latter. This we learn from Hypsicles, who supplies the chain of proofs; from which we find that the principal propositions of the 13th book of Euclid were known to Aristæus: and indeed that this book was compiled in great part from his work. Aristæus is specially mentioned by Pappus amongst those who prosecuted the analytical method, by the aid of which these discoveries were made; the method first cultivated by the Pythagoreans in their studies on the measurement of solids, and especially on the duplication of the cube.
| This biography is
reprinted from The New Calendar of Great Men. Ed. Frederic
Harrison. London: Macmillan and Co., 1920. |
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