Heron_Of_Alexandria

Heron Of Alexandria Heron of Alexandria By: Mark Carson Another worker in applied mathematics belonging to the period under consideration was Heron of Alexandria. His much disputed date, with possibilities ranging from 150 BC to 250 AD, has recently been plausibly placed in the second half of the first century AD. His works on mathematical and physical subjects are so numerous and varied that it is customary to describe him as an encyclopedic writer in these fields. There are reasons to suppose he was an Egyptian with Greek training. At any rate his writings, which so often aim at practical utility rather than theoretical completeness, show a curious blend of the Greek and the Oriental. He did much to furnish a scientific foundation for engineering and land surveying. Fourteen or so treatises by Heron, some evidently considerably edited, have come down to us, and there are references to additional last works. Heron’s works may be divided into two classes, the geometrical and the mechanical. The geometrical works deal largely with problems on mensuration and the mechanical ones with descriptions of ingenious mechanical devices. The most important of Heron’s geometrical works in his Metrica, written in three books and discovered in Constantinople by heron, triangle, heron’s, problem, mathematics, area, works, two, sum, sides, principle, plane, found, path, mensuration, mechanical, inclined, equal, square, spe, simple, required, one, metrica, geometrical, fractions, formula, between, years, work, weight, value, type, terms