Pappus of Alexandria

Pappus of Alexandria was a Greek geometer who was born in Alexandria in Egypt about the year 290 and died about the year 350. The MacTutor biography calls him the last of the great Greek geometers and says that one of his theorems is cited as the basis of modern projective geometry. He wrote commentaries on Euclid's Elements and on Ptolemy's Almagest, but his best known work is the Mathematical Collection, a survey of Greek geometry and mechanics. Book VII of the Collection contains the result now known as Guldin's theorem, and Book VIII deals with mechanics. Almost nothing is known about his life apart from these writings.