The Works of Archimedes

B., R. E.

doi:10.1038/057409a0

Books Received
Published: 03 March 1898

The Works of Archimedes

R. E. B.

Nature volume 57, pages 409–410 (1898)Cite this article

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Abstract

THIS is a companion volume to Dr. T. L. Heath's valuable edition of the “Treatise on Conic Sections” by Apollonius of Perga, and the same patience, learning and skill which have turned the latter book into a delightful guide to early Greek geometry have been here applied to present in a most readable form the extant works of perhaps the greatest mathematical genius that the world has ever seen. The same general plan of editing has been followed in this book as in that of Apollonius, such condensation and modernisation having been introduced as is possible without alteration of the methods employed. We consequently now possess for the first time in English dress a reproduction of Archimedes’ work, without addition or essential omission, from which have been removed the thorns and briars that have hitherto beset the path of the English student who would make himself acquainted with the methods invented and employed by the extraordinary genius of Archimedes in order to make those measurements which now-a-days are rendered easy only by the use of the integral calculus. Not the least deterrent of these obstacles have been the Doric dialect of parts of the original and the abbreviations and corruptions in which the text of the accessible editions abounds, so that hitherto the French translation by Peyrard, or that in German by Nizze, has been preferable for the purposes of study.

The Works of Archimedes.

Edited in Modern Notation, with introductory Chapters by T. L. Heath, sometime Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Pp. clxxxvi + 326. (Cambridge: at the University Press, 1897.)