500 BC-1 AD: Euclid, alive around 300 BC, completely transformed mathematics. His influence is extremely evident today in the fields of geometry, arithmetic, and optics. Living in a time when questioning thought, trying to understand the changing world, and developing ideas that could help understand the natural world, Euclid was able to identify and create ideas that transformed the way people viewed the world into a more mathematical, logical, and geometric perspective. While many of his works have been lost over time, many of his famous pieces are preserved and widely used today. He was even captured in one of history’s most famous pieces of art! Euclid is best known for his Elements, which published his ideas on geometry and fundamental algebraic topics. Elements studied geometry, prime numbers, and his Euclidean algorithm. It earned him his title as the Father of Geometry for creating and popularizing geometry. His work, the first complete, coherent review of all geometry theory up until this point in time, organized study so that people could learn by following his work. It is considered one of the most precise and understandable books of mathematics and has helped improve and create the modern mathematics realm. This aspect of Elements allowed it to rise to fame and become one of history’s most translated and studied books despite its overwhelming size (13 gigantic volumes).
Euclid is also famous for his logical proofs and deductive methods, one of the main reasons why Euclid’s work served as a pivotal moment of mathematical thinking. Although he did transform the way people saw space, time, and shapes, a huge part of the fame of his book stemmed from his extensive proofs and deductive reasoning starting at basic axioms, or commonly agreed-on concepts. He took common knowledge and used it to build extremely complex theorems and prove old ones. For example, starting with only axioms, he was able