Menaechmus
Sign in to saveMenaechmus (, c. 380 – c. 320 BC) was an ancient Greek mathematician, geometer and philosopher born in Alopeconnesus or Prokonnesos in the Thracian Chersonese, who was known for his friendship with the renowned philosopher Plato and for his apparent discovery of conic sections and his solution to the then-long-standing problem of doubling the cube using the parabola and hyperbola.
Key facts
- Person.name
- Menaechmus
- Person.birth_date
- c. 380 BC
- Person.birth_place
- Alopeconnesus
- Person.death_date
- c. 320 BC
- Person.death_place
- Cyzicus[?]
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
Show 4 more facts
- date of birth
- 0380-00-00
- date of death
- 0320-00-00
- name in native language
- Μέναιχμος
- birth name
- Μέναιχμος
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Menaechmus (, c. 380 – c. 320 BC) was an ancient Greek mathematician, geometer and philosopher born in Alopeconnesus or Prokonnesos in the Thracian Chersonese, who was known for his friendship with the renowned philosopher Plato and for his apparent discovery of conic sections and his solution to the then-long-standing problem of doubling the cube using the parabola and hyperbola.
== Life and work == Menaechmus is remembered by mathematicians for his discovery of the conic sections and his solution to the problem of doubling the cube. Menaechmus likely discovered the conic sections, that is, the ellipse, the parabola, and the hyperbola, as a by-product of his search for the solution to the Delian problem. Menaechmus knew that in a parabola y2 = Lx, where L is a constant called the latus rectum, although he was not aware of the fact that any equation in two unknowns determines a curve. He apparently derived these properties of conic sections and others as well. Using this information it was now possible to find a solution to the problem of the duplication of the cube by solving for the points at which two parabolas intersect, a solution equivalent to solving a cubic equation.