University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Rare Book Room Exhibit

Pappus of Alexandria was a Greek mathematician, astronomer and geographer whose importance lies in his commentaries on the mathematical work of his predecessors. He stands with Diophantus as the last of the long line of Alexandrian mathematicians. Many calculus students study the "Theorems of Pappus", which compute the surface area and volume of space regions bound by a curve rotated about an axis. Remarkably, these were originally discovered and proved without the use of calculus. (As an example of such a geometrical object, a recumbent bagel may be thought of as a standing circle rotated around a central vertical line).

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