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Draw my life, Euclid's style

Hey everybody! What’s up? So, as you know, there’ve been a lot of requests going on for a Draw My Life. At first, I didn’t want to do it because my life isn’t very interesting, and I’ve seen a lot of better Draw My Lifes. Well, after reading a lot of pushy comments, I finally decided to make one. Umm, enjoy!

(:quicktime http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~aribeiro/videos/draw_my_life_euclid_style.mov width=500 height=300 scale=0.4 autoplay=off:) Figure 2. Euclid's life by Aseda and Guille.

I was born at around 330-325 B.C.E, no one knows exactly when, and I was born in Tyre, which all you youngsters know as ‘Lebanon’. I was born into a rich family, where I was raised in Damascus, which you probably call ‘Syria’. Not much is known about my childhood, I just lived with my father and grandfather. Well, when I was old enough, I said bye to my family, and I went off to Athens with some money from my dad to study at Plato’s Academy. There, I was a great student, and learned all there was to learn about mathematics, which, back then, wasn’t really that much. I had a great time there, and I studied philosophy and history as well. I made a lot of friends, and unfortunately I had to say goodbye to follow my dream of becoming a great mathematician, and around 300 B.C.E, I left them for Alexandria, in Egypt. I frolicked around the library, reading published works. I especially liked the work of this guy, Pythagoras. He too was a mathematician, and he too was interested in geometry. I wasn’t famous, yet, though, and I wanted to be. I was just a typical Plato’s Academy kid reading a bunch of books in the Alexandrian Library. But that was going to change. And soon.

I was spending a lot of time at the library, you know, studying geometry and math. Then, I decided that I would be like one of the authors. I decided that I would be the next Pythagoras. But I was far from that. Every single day, I would spend most of my time at the library, where I began developing geometrical ideas, theories, arithmetics, and irrational numbers into geometry. Many people were like me, but I don’t think any of them got so far as I did. One day, while I was working at the library, I realized that every single piece of mathematical knowledge of my day could be solved with pure logical reasoning! To prove this I started working on this series of 13 books, called Elements: 6 books on plane geometry, 4 books on properties of numbers, and 3 books on solid geometry. This work would revolutionize and define geometry for the next two millenniums. Before long, I was making a name for myself! I was even called in to work for King Ptolemy, the King of Alexandria at the time. One time, he even asked me if ‘there was a shorter path to learning geometry than the elements’. Obviously, I told him that there was no royal road to learning geometry, not even for King Ptolemy himself.

I was on a roll; everyone in Alexandria knew me. I wrote Data, On Divisions of Figures, Optics, Phenomena, Conics, Elements of Music, Pseudaria, and Porisms. Eventually I was doing so much work in Alexandria, that I was actually known as ‘Euclid of Alexandria’. The Alexandrians started calling me the ‘Geometer’ and ‘The Father of Geometry’ because my ideas so dominated mathematical reasoning and explaining at the time. Even today, I remain the most influential mathematical scholar of all time. One day, I realized that I wasn’t the only one that was interested in mathematics, geometry, and reasoning. There were tons of other students coming to Alexandria studying math and geometry. Knowing how they felt, I opened my own school in Alexandria’s library for people who were interested in mathematics and geometry like me so they could study in the library, and, like me, add to the library. Many students came in, and I taught them everything I had learned about mathematics.

But all good things—and people, have to come to an end. One day, no one knows when or where, I died, and I could not keep making discoveries. Today, I am known as the Euclid of Alexandria, the man who revolutionized geometry for next two following millenniums. It is hard to know much about myself, as at the time I lived, there many people named Euclid, and a handful of these people were also mathematicians and geometers, but unfortunately for them, none of those Euclids have come as far as me. Thank you all, for watching this video. See ya next time!