Abstract
We will begin our journey through projective geometry in a slightly uncommon way. We will have a very close look at one particular geometric theorem— namely The hexagon theorem of Pappos. Pappos of Alexandria lived around 290–350 CE and was one of the last great Greek geometers of antiquity. He was the author of several books (some of them are unfortunately lost) that covered large parts of the mathematics known at that time. Among other topics, his work addressed questions in mechanics, dealt with the volume/ circumference properties of circles, and even gave a solution to the angle trisection problem (with the additional help of a conic). The reader may take this first chapter as a kind of overture to the remainder of the book in which several topics that are important later on are introduced. Without any harm one can also skip this chapter on first reading and come back to it later.
Access provided by Autonomous University of Puebla. Download to read the full chapter text
Chapter PDF
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Richter-Gebert, J. (2011). Pappos’s Theorem: Nine Proofs and Three Variations. In: Perspectives on Projective Geometry. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-17286-1_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-17286-1_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-17285-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-17286-1
eBook Packages: Mathematics and StatisticsMathematics and Statistics (R0)