Skip to content
Wellsprings
Pappus Alexandrinus

Pappus Alexandrinus

c. 290 CE–c. 350 CE · Alexandria

Pappus of Alexandria (active early 4th century CE) was a Greek mathematician, the author of the Collection, a wide-ranging compendium of Greek geometry that preserves, summarizes, and extends the work of earlier mathematicians. His writings are a major source for our knowledge of ancient mathematics and influenced the later development of geometry.

See Pappus Alexandrinus’s journey on the map →

Life journeyclick any stop, or use ←/→

Stop 1 of 1

AlexandriaEgypt

We know they were here, but the specifics of what they did at this stop aren’t recorded yet in our corpus.

About Alexandria

Alexandria is the main Mediterranean port of northern Egypt and the country's second city. Founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BCE, it became the capital of the Ptolemies, whose Museum and Great Library made it the leading centre of Hellenistic learning. It also held one of the largest Jewish communities of antiquity, where the Greek Bible translation known as the Septuagint was produced and Philo wrote. Church tradition traces its patriarchate to Mark the Evangelist, and its catechetical school was led by Clement and Origen. Arab forces under Amr ibn al-As took the city in 641, and it remained a commercial and scholarly hub of the Islamic world; the Sufi master Ibn Ata Allah al-Iskandari was born there.

In Alexandria at the same time

Diophantus Alexandrinus, Theon of Alexandria

See other sages who lived in Alexandria→

In the same place & time

Sages whose lives overlapped with Pappus Alexandrinus’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.

The world in their lifetime

Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Pappus Alexandrinus’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.

Works(1)