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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: HEG-HIG |
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HERO OF ALEXANDRIA , Greek geometer and writer on mechanical and physical subjects, probably flourished in the second half of the 1st century. This is the more modern view, in contrast to the earlier theory most generally accepted, according to which he flourished about Too B.C. The earlier theory started from the superscription of one of his works, "Hpcovos KTrlvc(3iov (3eXosroiisa, from which it was inferred that Hero was a pupil of Ctesibius. Martin, Hultsch and Cantor took this Ctesibius to be a barber of that name who lived in the reign of Ptolemy
Ptolemy
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The geometrical treatises which have survived (though not interpolated) in Greek are entitled respectively Definitiones, Geometric, Geodaesia, Stereometrica (i. and ii.), Mensurae, Liber Geoponicus, to which must now be added the Metrica recently discovered by R. Sch8ne in a MS. at Constantinople. These books, except the Definitiones, mostly consist of directions for obtaining, from given parts, the areas or volumes, and other parts, of plane or solid figures. A remarkable feature is the bare statement of a number of very close approximations to the square roots of numbers which are not complete squares. Others occur in the Metrica where also a method of finding such approximate square, and even approximate cube, roots is shown. Hero's expressions for the areas of regular polygons of from 5 to 12 sides in terms of the squares of the sides show interesting approximations to the values of trigonometrical ratios. Akin to the geometrical works is that On the Dioptra, a remarkable book on land-surveying, so called from the instrument described in it, which was used for the same purposes as the modern theodolite. It is in this book that Hero proves the expression for the area of a triangle in terms of its sides. The Pneumatica in two books is also extant 'fn-Greek as is also the Automatopoietica. In the former will be found such things as siphons, " Hero's fountain," " penny-in-theslot " machines, a fire-engine
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separate treatises on the subject of the mechanical powers, which are fully discussed in the Mechanics, ii., iii. The Belopoiica (on engines of war) is extant in Greek, and both this and the Mechanics contain Hero's solution of the problem of the two mean proportionals. Hero also wrote Catoplrica (on reflecting surfaces), and it seems certain that we possess this in a Latin work, probably translated from the Greek by Wilhelm van Moerbeek, which was long thought to be a fragment of Ptolemy's Optics, because it bore the title Ptolemaei de speculis in the MS. But the attribution to Ptolemy was shown to be wrong as soon as it was made clear (especially by Martin) that another translation by an Admiral Eugenius Siculus (I2th century) of an optical work from the Arabic was Ptolemy's Optics. Of other treatises by Hero only fragments remain. One was four books on Water Clocks (llepi bbpiwv ,povxoird ou), of which Proclus
The Pneumatica, Automatopoietica, Belopoiica and Cheiroballistra of Hero were published in Greek and Latin in Thevenot's Veterum mathematicorum opera graece et latine pleraque nunc primum edita (Paris, 1693) ; the first important critical researches on Hero were G. B. Venturi's Commentari sopra la storia e la teoria dell'ottica (Bologna, 1814) and H. Martin's " Recherches sur la vie et les ouvrages d'Heron d'Alexandrie disciple de Ctesibius et sur tous les ouvrages mathematiques grecs conserves ou perdus,publies ou inedits, 9ui ont ete attribues a un auteur nomme Heron " (Mein. presentee a t Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, i. serie, iv., 1854). The geometrical works (except of course the Metrica) were edited (Greek only) by F. Hultsch (Heronis Alexandrini geometricorum et stereometricorum reliquiae, 1864), the Dioptra by Vincent (Extraits des manuscrits relatifs a la geometrie pratique des Grecs, Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothr'que Imperiale, xix. 2, 1858), the treatises on Engines of War by C. Wescher (Poliorcetique des Grecs, Paris, 1867). The Mechanics was first published by Carra de Vaux in the Journal asiatique (ix. serie, ii., 1893). In 1899 began the publication in Teubner's series of Heronis Alexandrini opera quae supersunt omnia. Vol. i. and Supplement (by W. Schmidt) contains the Pneumatica and Automata, the fragment on Water Clocks, the De ingeniis spiritualibus of Philon of Byzantium and extracts on Pneumatics by Vitruvius. Vol. ii. pt. i., by L. Nix and W. Schmidt, contains the Mechanics in Arabic, Greek fragments of the same, the Catoplrica in Latin with appendices of extracts from Olympiodorus, Vitruvius, Pliny, &c. Vol. iii. (by Hermann Schone) contains the Meirica (in three books) and the Dioptra. A German translation is added throughout. The approximation to square roots in Hero has been the subject of papers too numerous to mention. But reference should be made to the exhaustive studies on Hero's arithmetic by Paul Tannery, " L'Arithmetique des Grecs dans Heron d'Alexandrie " (Mem. de la Soc. des sciences phys. et math. de Bordeaux, ii. serie, iv., 1882), " La Stereometrie d'Heron d'Alexandrie " and " Etudes Heroniennes (ibid. v., 1883), " Questions Heroniennes " (Bulletin des sciences math., ii. serie, viii., 1884), " Un Fragment des Metriques d'Heron " (Zeitschrift fur Math. and Physik, xxxix., 1894 Bulletin des sciences math., ii. serie, xviii., 1894). A good account of Hero's works will be found in M. Cantor's eschichte der Mathematik, i.$ (1894), chapters 18 and 19, and in G. Loria's studies, Le Scienze esatte nell' antica Grecia, especially libro iii. (Modena, 1900), pp. 103-128. (T. L. H.)End of Article: HERO OF ALEXANDRIA If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
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