The Man Who Made Maths

Euclid’s Elements of Geometry was a book that changed the world.

One of the most read, most imitated and most challenged books of our history, it shaped the path of art, philosophy, architecture, and even fashion – as well as setting maths off on its course, and making modern science possible. Ben Wardhaugh traces the legacy of this book, and that of geometry, across every continent and the two thousand years of its influence so far, telling stories that range from Ptolemy to Newton, and Hobbes to Lewis Carroll.

Written by a mathematician, this history is one of culture: how Euclid and his geometry have been at the heart of sculpture, philosophy, music, printing, and all matters of design – not just in Ancient Greece, but across medieval Byzantium and Islam, early modern China, Renaissance Italy, the age of European empires, and our world today.

This is a history of Euclid told not just as the legacy of maths, but as the culture of our past two millennia.