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EUCLIDE. Euclid, the Greek mathematician, fl. c. 300 B.C. under Ptolemy of Alexandria, 306-283 B.C. His most important work is Stoicheia or Elements, in thirteen books, composed of problems in geometry and the theory of numbers. Cassiodorus says that Boethius did a translation; of this, only the propositions of Books I-IV and the proofs of Book I, propositions 1-3, have survived. Three versions of Elements are attributed to Adelard of Bath, done c. 1126 or later; Gerard of Cremona translated the work from an Arabic source in the twelfth century.

Euclide is the great divider, SumT 2289. [Boece: Gerard of Cremona]

The name occurs medially.

H.L.L. Busard, ed., The First Latin Translation of Euclid's "Elements"; M. Clagett, "The Medieval Latin Translations from the Arabic of the Elements of Euclid, with Special Emphasis on the Version of Adelard of Bath." Isis 44 (1953): 16-42; J.E. Murdoch, "Euclides graeco-latinus: A Hitherto Unknown Medieval Latin Translation of the Elements made Directly from the Greek." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 71 (1967): 249-302.
From CHAUCER NAME DICTIONARY
Copyright © 1988, 1996 Jacqueline de Weever
Published by Garland Publishing, Inc., New York and London.
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