Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Biography of Nichomacus

Very little is known of the life of Nichomacus.  It is believed that he lived sometime around 100AD.  That figure is based on clues from his writing; who he did and did not mention.  He was probably from a Greek city in the area of Palestine.  He probably studied at Alexandria, in Egypt.
He was an important popularizer of Neo-Pythagoreanism, publishing books on Harmonics and Arithmetic.  It is believed that he also wrote 'An Introduction to Geometry' and a 'Life of Pythagoras' but those works are now lost.  It's possible that he also wrote about Plato and may have written an 'Introduction to Astronomy'.
His 'Introduction to Arithmetic' was used as a text book into the Middle Ages.  Which must make it one of the most studied math books in all of history.  Nichomachus was considered part of the 'golden chain' of true philosophers (or at least that was claimed by a a fifth-century Neo-Platonist named Proclus).
In short, we don't know much about him personally, but he played a key role in spreading the knowledge of Greek mathematicians into later ages.

No comments:

Post a Comment