Apollonius: Conics Books V to VII

With the publication of this book I discharge a debt which our era has long owed to the memory of a great mathematician of antiquity: to pub lish the /llost books" of the Conics of Apollonius in the form which is the closest we have to the original, the Arabic version of the Banu Musil. Un til now this has been accessible only in Halley's Latin translation of 1710 (and translations into other languages entirely dependent on that). While I yield to none in my admiration for Halley's edition of the Conics, it is far from satisfying the requirements of modern scholarship. In particular, it does not contain the Arabic text. I hope that the present edition will not only remedy those deficiencies, but will also serve as a foundation for the study of the influence of the Conics in the medieval Islamic world. I acknowledge with gratitude the help of a number of institutions and people. The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, by the award of one of its Fellowships for 1985-86, enabled me to devote an unbroken year to this project, and to consult essential material in the Bodleian Li brary, Oxford, and the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. Corpus Christi Col lege, Cambridge, appointed me to a Visiting Fellowship in Trinity Term, 1988, which allowed me to make good use of the rich resources of both the University Library, Cambridge, and the Bodleian Library.

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This is the first edition of the original text of the advanced part of the most important work on conic sections written in antiquity and one of the most influential works in mathematics. It is also the first literal English translation of it ever to be published. The purpose of the work is to make available, to those interested in the history of science and to mathematicians, a version of the work as close to the original as possible. This part of Apollonius' Conics is lost in the original Greek, and only an Arabic translation made in the 9th century survives. This text has never been published previously, and all "editions" of this part of Apollonius' work are based on the Latin translation from the Arabic published by Edmund Halley in 1710, which suffers from Halley's insufficient knowledge of Arabic and his use of a single manuscript. The present edition is based on all known manuscripts. Its other improvements over Halley's edition are: 1) the Arabic text with a full critical apparatus; 2) an accurate English translation (until now only a loose paraphrase, based on Halley's translation, has been available in English); 3) a commentary to elucidate both mathematical and historical difficulties. This book will replace Halley's edition and all its derivatives as the standard edition of this part of Apollonius' work.

Contenu
Contents: Introduction: The Ancient Mathematical Background. Descriptions of Manuscripts. Editorial Principles. Conics: Text and Translation.- Notes on the Text and Translation.- Appendices.- Figures.- Bibliography and Indexes.