Hippocrates of Chios

What's the largest prime number? The year is 300 BC, and the Greek mathematician Euclid is writing one of the most extensive works on mathematics ever written, The Elements.

It is a 13-book collection full of theorems, geometry, proofs, number theory, and much more, largely inspired by and expanding on earlier works from mathematical greats such as Hippocrates and Pythagoras.

The Elements has even been called the most successful textbook ever written.

In fact, it is so thorough in its mathematical logic that it was not until the 19th century that any major improvements to the logic were made.

Generations of thinkers before him had developed theorems concerning triangles, circles, proportions, polygons, magnitudes, and solid geometry.

The work associated with figures such as Thales, Pythagoras, Hippocrates of Chios, Eudoxus, and Theaetetus already formed a substantial mathematical inheritance.

Euclid's achievement was to gather much of that knowledge into a coherent deductive sequence, beginning with definitions, postulates, and common notions before advancing through propositions whose conclusions depended upon what had already been established.

That method changed the intellectual world.