Stanford: Stanford classics student traces history of ancient geometry diagrams

Stanford: Stanford classics student traces history of ancient geometry diagrams. “”Humans have been drawing lines and circles to grasp geometrical concepts and describe the laws of nature for about 5,000 years. But most scholars have approached the history of ancient mathematical sciences through close examinations of texts and writings, an area of study called philology. Eunsoo Lee, a PhD student in classics, hopes to expand that scholarship by tracing the changes and variations in diagrams over the course of human history…. Over the past six years, Lee has examined changes in diagrams used in Elements, a collection of 13 books on mathematical and geometric concepts attributed to Euclid, the ancient Greek mathematician who lived in Alexandria, Egypt, around 300 BCE. He is attempting to build a database of diagrams as part of his dissertation project.” I took a quick look at the Web site and I don’t know if it’s me or him, but the database is not available.