ProofWiki:Mathematicians/Eudoxus of Cnidus

From ProofWiki

Jump to: navigation, search

Greek astronomer and mathematician who, among other things:

Pioneered work on proportion;
Introduced the astronomical globe;
Developed the method of exhaustion, this being an early precursor to integral calculus. This was later exploited by Archimedes.

Student of Plato.

Nationality

Greek

Born: 410 or 408 BCE, Cnidus (on Resadiye peninsula), Asia Minor (now Knidos, Turkey)
Died: 355 or 347 BCE, Cnidus, Asia Minor (now Turkey)

No written works of his survive, although there are plenty of secondary sources.

These are the names of some of the books he wrote:

Disappearances of the Sun, possibly on eclipses
Oktaeteris (Ὀκταετηρίς), on an eight-year lunisolar cycle of the calendar
Phaenomena (Φαινόμενα) and Entropon (Ἔντροπον), on spherical astronomy, probably based on observations made by Eudoxus in Egypt and Cnidus
On Speeds, on planetary motions