The geometry, we are reading today, is written according to the book complied by Euclid 2300 years ago. Euclid himself discovered many theorems of geometry. He wrote a book containing his theorems and the theorems discovered earlier to him. This book is named as “Elements” and consists of 13 volumes. This was the first concise geometry book ever written. It also contains many theorems on arithmetic. It has been translated into most of the languages of the world and sold in large number. It is said that no other book except the bible has been sold in such a large number as this.

Euclid was born in 330 B.C. at Athens, capital of Greece. He completed his education in the institute founded by the great philosopher, Plato and then went to Alexandria, one of the prosperous cities of Egypt.

At that time Ptolemy Megus was the king of Egypt. He was an intelligent and learned person and was respecting poets, artists, scientists and mathematicians very much. He had established a large library and education centre at Alexandria. He had collected books from different parts of the world for the library which had around 700,000 books. All these books were written in papyrus as paper had not been invented by that time. It was called the first library of the world. Euclid joined as a professor of mathematics as this institute. He was very famous and popular in Egypt.

    Euclid was teaching geometry to the king. There is an interesting story regarding him and the king. King Ptolemy was very fond of geometry, but he had no patience to learn this. Once he asked Euclid whether there was any shortcut method to learn geometry without the help of the “Elements”. Euclid replied, “Sir, there is no royal way to learn geometry”.

Euclid has complied his famous book at Alexandria. Its first volume consists of point, line, circle, triangle and quadrilateral. Geometrical construction with the help of algebra has been explained in second volume. Circle has been discussed in detail in third and fourth volume. Fifth and sixth volume is based on ratio and proportion. Different properties of integers have been described in volume seven to nine. Tenth volume consists of complex number. Solid geometry of pyramid, cylinder, cone and sphere has been discussed in volume eleven to thirteen.

  The speciality of Euclid’s book is that he has written it in a very simple and lucid manner so that the common people can understand it easily. This book has increased the popularity of geometry in great way and has encouraged people to study it. Due to this contribution to geometry, Euclid is known as “Father of Geometry”.

Apart from geometry, Euclid was also working on optics and number theory. He had written two other books named ‘Optics’ and ‘Data’ but these two books have been lost.

Some people opine that the environment and necessity of Egypt attracted Euclid towards geometry. There were great floods in the river Nile in Egypt almost every year. Due to this the lands and crops were destroyed. The king was not collecting tax on the flood affected lands. But for this, exact measurement of the land was being necessary. It is believed that geometry was created in Egypt to meet this necessity.

By the time Euclid was engaged in the research of geometry, many theorems had been discovered. Euclid added many more to that and complied those in a systematic and logical way. The original book was written in Arabic. It was translated into Latin in 12th century and hence after into different language.

Euclid died in 275 B.C. at the age of 55 years. But he will be remembered for his ‘Elements’ forever.