Edmund Halley’s Reconstruction of the Lost Book of Apollonius’ Conics: Translation from Latin, Introduction and Commentary

Edmund Halley’s Reconstruction of the Lost Book of Apollonius’ Conics: Translation from Latin, Introduction and Commentary

Role: Translator

Apollonius’s Conics was one of the greatest works of advanced mathematics in antiquity. The work comprised eight books, of which four have come down to us in their original Greek and three in Arabic. The present work provides the first complete English translation of Halley’s reconstruction of Book VIII with supplementary notes on the text. It also contains an introduction discussing aspects of Apollonius’s Conics, an investigation of Edmond Halley’s understanding of the nature of his venture into ancient mathematics, and an appendices giving a brief account of Apollonius’s approach to conic sections and his mathematical techniques.