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Euclid and 'The Elements'

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Euclid and 'The Elements' GENERAL ⎜ ARTICLE Euclid and ‘The Elements’ C R Pranesachar When a crime is committed and the culprit responsible for the crime is nabbed, the job of the investigators is not over. To convince the judge, they have to prove beyond doubt that it was the accused who committed the crime. Likewise, math- ematical statements require proofs for their veracity to be established. Further, to make these statements precise we need to have a set of proper definitions. It was Euclid, who C R Pranesachar is at more than two thousand years ago, started this tradition when Mathematical Olympiad Cell, HBCSE, TIFR at the he bequeathed to the world his book entitled The Elements. Department of Mathemat- This tradition has continued since then. Definitions, proofs ics, Indian Institute of besides axioms have become an inalienable part of math- Science, Bangalore. His ematical lore. We owe all this to Euclid, one of the greatest PhD is in combinatorics. His interests are enumera- pioneers of rigour and reasoning. In this article we discuss the tion and triangle geometry. work of Euclid. Introduction ‘There is no royal road to Geometry’ Euclid Geometry is one branch of Mathematics that abounds in beautiful and striking theorems at a very elementary level. Here, by geometry, we mean the geometry of triangles and circles. Till the 1960’s, pure geometry was taught not only in schools (upto the plus two level) but also at the undergraduate level. Students of the present generation are not generally familiar with some of these interesting results in pure geometry as it has given way to other more ‘important’ topics in the curriculum. Let us have a look at some of the significant but almost forgotten Keywords results: Definitions, postulates, axioms, theorems, proofs, prime num- 1. The orthocentre H, the centroid G and the circumcentre O of bers, gcd. RESONANCE ⎜ April 2007 19 GENERAL ⎜ ARTICLE Figure 1 (left). K, L are mid- any triangle lie on a straight line. Further HG : GO = 2:1. This line points of BC, CA. D, E are is called the Euler line of the triangle. (See Figure 1.) the feet of altitudes. Figure 2. (right). K, L, M are 2. In a triangle the midpoints of its sides, the feet of altitudes on midpoints of BC, CA, AB. the sides and the midpoints of the joins of the orthocenter to the D, E, F are the feet of alti- vertices (in all, nine points) lie on a circle – called the nine-point tudes. circle – and its centre N is the midpoint of OH. Thus N also lies on the Euler line! (See Figure 2.) 3. The incircle and excircles of a triangle touch the nine-point circle internally and externally, respectively. This is called Feuerbach’s Theorem. There are many more such succinct statements and quite a few have several ‘proofs’ each. These proofs have been made possible by the diligence of one man named Euclid, although he himself did not prove the above theorems. Euclid was a Greek mathematician who lived between circa 325 BC and circa 265 BC. Unfortu- nately, not much is known about his life except that he came from a rich family and thus was able to go to an ‘Advanced School’ to The concept of study and that for most of his life he lived in Alexandria, Egypt. proof was alien to He was the first to see that mathematical truths were based on many other certain definitions, postulates and axioms and all results (theo- civilizations rems) had to be ‘proved’. The concept of proof was alien to many although several other civilizations although several mathematical truths had been mathematical empirically verified. For Euclid, proof meant much. After all, one truths had been had to substantiate what one said. This meant that one had to use empirically verified. a series of statements each based on the previous statements, 20 RESONANCE ⎜ April 2007 GENERAL ⎜ ARTICLE definitions, postulates, etc., and logically derive the conclusion In Geometry, Euclid and then only one could end the argument with the letters ‘QED’! proved results on triangles (scalene, It was Euclid who systematically went on his business of writing isosceles and about his findings (some compiled and some his own). He started equilateral), with definitions, postulates, common notions and built a huge collinearity, imperishable edifice on them, which he named ‘The Elements’. concurrency, This treatise, on Geometry and Number Theory, has 13 volumes. parallelism, similarity, Although the original book was lost, its translations existed, congruency, tangency especially in Arabic and Latin and now everything is put together and concyclicity. The in its place. Surprisingly it is said to be devoid of any preface, famous Pythagoras epilogue or witty comments! Theorem on right- angled triangles is In Geometry, Euclid proved results on triangles (scalene, isosce- proved in the first les and equilateral), collinearity, concurrency, parallelism, simi- volume. larity, congruency, tangency and concyclicity. The famous Pytha- goras Theorem on right-angled triangles is proved in the first volume. In Number Theory he defined divisibility, prime num- bers, greatest common divisor and proved several properties of these notions. They include the famed theorem on the infinitude of prime numbers and the Euclidean algorithm for finding the gcd of two numbers using repeated division. This latter notion is relevant to different algebraic structures in modern Algebra, especially ‘Rings’. In Solid Geometry he proved the existence of five regular polyhedra1: the tetrahedron, the cube, the octahedron, 1 A polyhedron is a 3-dimen- the dodecahedron and the icosahedron. sional object bounded by identi- cal regular polygons as faces with the same number of edges The different topics covered in The Elements are as follows: meeting at each vertex. z Volumes I to VI – Geometry; z Volumes VII to X – Number Theory; Each volume z Volumes XI to XIII – Solid Geometry. begins with Each volume begins with definitions, and then propositions are definitions, and proved based on the previous material. The first volume has, in then propositions addition, five postulates and five axioms. Some of his definitions are proved based are disputable. For example, he defines a point as that which has on the previous no part. He also says the ends of the straight line are points. He material. RESONANCE ⎜ April 2007 21 GENERAL ⎜ ARTICLE “Almost from the time defines a straight line as that which evenly lies with points on of its writing and itself. Yet with all its imperfections, The Elements has stood the lasting almost to the test of time and was a prized textbook for several centuries. It has present, ‘The seen several editions and has been translated into several lan- Elements’ has exerted guages. B L Van der Waerden remarked that “Almost from the continuous and major time of its writing and lasting almost to the present, ‘The Ele- influence on human ments’ has exerted continuous and major influence on human affairs”. affairs”. No wonder the methodology of Euclid continues to hold B L Van der Waerden its grip on us even now. Euclid was not a first-rate mathematician, but he was the first to realize that proof and reasoning were as important as the statement of the theorem. Euclid also made use of the powerful method of ‘Reductio-ad-absurdum’ to prove some of his results: that is, you negate the conclusion and arrive at an absurd (or contradictory) statement(s) by using hypothesis or otherwise. There is even a far-fetched hypothesis that Euclid did not exist and a team of mathematicians who gave themselves this name compiled the 13 volumes which they named The Elements. Incidentally, in Greek mythology, water, earth, fire and air constitute ‘the Elements’. They are supposed to constitute the whole matter in the world. The word ‘Theorem’ is perhaps related to God. Towards the end of the 19th century Hilbert and others developed an axiomatic theory of geometry and laid two dimen- sional and three dimensional geometry on firmer foundations. In this context, the reader may refer to a series of articles by K Paranjape published in Resonance [2]. Volume I of The Elements In the first volume there are 5 common notions, 5 postulates and 23 definitions. We give below all the common notions and postulates, along with a few definitions. Besides these, there are 48 propositions. Common Notions 1. Things which equal the same thing also equal one another. [If a = c and b = c, then a = b.] 22 RESONANCE ⎜ April 2007 GENERAL ⎜ ARTICLE 2. If equals are added to equals, then the wholes are equal. [If a = b and c = d, then a + c = b + d.] 3. If equals are subtracted from equals then the remainders are equal. [If a = b and c = d, then a – c = b – d.] 4. Things which coincide with one another equal one another. 5. The whole is greater than part. Some Definitions 1. A point is that which has no part. 2. A line is breadthless length. 3. The ends of a line are points. 4. A straight line is a line that lies evenly with the points on itself. 8. A plane angle is the inclination to one another of two lines in a plane which meet one another and do not lie in a straight line. 23. Parallel straight lines which, being in the same plane and produced indefinitely in both directions, do not meet one another in either direction. Postulates 1. To draw a straight line from any point to any point. (That is, The last postulate, any two points may be joined by a straight line). called Euclid’s 5th Postulate became a 2. To produce a finite straight line continuously in a straight line.
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