The History of Geometry

Geometry's origins go back to approximately 3,000 BC in ancient Egypt. Ancient

Egyptians used an early stage of geometry in several ways, including the surveying of

land, construction of pyramids, and astronomy. Around 2,900 BC, ancient Egyptians

began using their knowledge to construct pyramids with four triangular faces and a

square base.

Euclid's Elements

The next great advancement in geometry came from Euclid in 300 BC when he wrote a text

titled 'Elements.' In this text, Euclid presented an ideal axiomatic form (now known

as Euclidean geometry) in which propositions could be proven through a small set of

statements that are accepted as true. In fact, Euclid was able to derive a great

portion of planar geometry from just the first five postulates in 'Elements.' These

postulates are listed below:

(1) A straight line segment can be drawn joining any two points.

(2) A straight line segment can be drawn joining any two points.

(3) Given any straight line segment, a circle can be drawn having the segment as

radius and one endpoint as center.

(4) All right angles are congruent.

(5) If two lines are drawn which intersect a third line in such a way that the sum of

the inner angles on one side is less than two right angles, then the two lines

inevitably must intersect each other on that side if extended infinitely.

Euclid's fifth postulate is also known as the parallel postulate.

René Descartes' Coordinate Geometry

The next tremendous advancement in the field of geometry occurred in the 17th century

when René Descartes discovered coordinate geometry. Coordinates and equations could be

used in this type of geometry in order to illustrate proofs. The creation of

coordinate geometry opened the doors to the development of calculus and physics.

The Development of Non-Euclidean Geometry

In the 19th century, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Nikolai Lobachevsky, and János Bolyai

formally discovered non-Euclidean geometry. In this kind of geometry, four of Euclid's

first five postulates remained consistent, but the idea that parallel lines do not

meet did not stay true. This idea is a driving force behind elliptical geometry and

hyperbolic geometry.
Angelica Paquibot
VII – Edison

A Brief History of Geometry

Geometry is one of the oldest branches of mathematics, and most important among texts is
Euclid's Elements. His text begins with 23 definitions, 5 postulates, and 5 common notions. From
there Euclid starts proving results about geometry using a rigorous logical method, and many of
us have been asked to do the same in high school.

Euclid's Elements served as the text on geometry for over 2000 years, and it has been admired as
a brilliant work in logical reasoning. But one of Euclid's five postulates was also the center of a
hot debate. It was this debate that ultimately led to the non-Euclidean geometries that can be
applied to different surfaces.

Here are Euclid's five postulates:

Does one postulate not look like the others? The first four postulates are short, simple, and
intuitive. Well, the second might seem a bit odd, but all Euclid is saying here is that you can
produce a line segment to any length you want. However, the 5th one, called the parallel
postulate, is not short or simple; it sounds more like something you would try to prove than
something you would take as given.

Indeed, the parallel postulate immediately gave philosophers and other thinkers fits, and many
tried to prove that the fifth postulate followed from the first four, to no avail. Euclid himself may
have been bothered at some level by the parallel postulate since he avoids using it until the proof
of the 29th proposition in his text.

In trying to make sense of the parallel postulate, many equivalent statements emerged. The two
equivalent statements most relevant to our study are these:
5′.′. Given a line and a point not on the line, there is exactly one line through the point that does
not intersect the given line.
5′′.5′′. The sum of the angles of any triangle is 180∘.∘.
Reformulation 5′5′ of the parallel postulate is called Playfair's Axiom after the Scottish
mathematician John Playfair (1748-1819). This version of the fifth postulate will be the one we
alter in order to produce non-Euclidean geometry.

The parallel postulate debate came to a head in the early 19th century. Farkas Bolyai (1775-
1856) of Hungary spent much of his life on the problem of trying to prove the parallel postulate
from the other four. He failed, and he fretted when his son János (1802-1860) started following
down the same tormented path. In an oft-quoted letter, the father begged the son to end the
obsession:
For God's sake, I beseech you, give it up. Fear it no less than the sensual passions because it too
may take all your time and deprive you of your health, peace of mind and happiness in life. 1 

But János continued to work on the problem, as did the Russian mathematician Nikolai
Lobachevsky (1792-1856). They independently discovered that a well-defined geometry is
possible in which the first four postulates hold, but the fifth doesn't. In particular, they
demonstrated that the fifth postulate is not a necessary consequence of the first four.

In this text we will study two types of non-Euclidean geometry. The first type is called
hyperbolic geometry, and is the geometry that Bolyai and Lobachevsky discovered. (The great
Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855) had also discovered this geometry; however, he did not
publish his work because he feared it would be too controversial for the establishment.) In
hyperbolic geometry, Euclid's fifth postulate is replaced by this:

5H. Given a line and a point not on the line, there are at least two lines through the point that do
not intersect the given line.
In hyperbolic geometry, the sum of the angles of any triangle is less than 180∘,∘, a fact we prove
in Chapter 5.

The second type of non-Euclidean geometry in this text is called elliptic geometry, which models
geometry on the sphere. In this geometry, Euclid's fifth postulate is replaced by this:

5E. Given a line and a point not on the line, there are zero lines through the point that do not
intersect the given line.
In elliptic geometry, the sum of the angles of any triangle is greater than 180∘,∘, a fact we prove
in Chapter 6.
The Pythagorean Theorem

The celebrated Pythagorean theorem depends upon the parallel postulate, so it is a theorem of
Euclidean geometry. However, we will encounter non-Euclidean variations of this theorem in
Chapters 5 and 6, and present a unified Pythagorean theorem in Chapter 7, with Theorem 7.4.7, a
result that appeared recently in [20].
The Pythagorean theorem appears as Proposition 47 at the end of Book I of Euclid's Elements,
and we present Euclid's proof below. The Pythagorean theorem is fundamental to the systems of
measurement we utilize in this text, in both Euclidean and non-Eucidean geometries. We also
remark that the final proposition of Book I, Proposition 48, gives the converse that builders use:
If we measure the legs of a triangle and find that c2=a2+b2c2=a2+b2 then the angle
opposite cc is right. The interested reader can find an online version of
Euclid's Elementshere [29].
Theorem 1.2.1 The Pythagorean Theorem
In right-angled triangles the square on the side opposite the right angle equals the sum of the
squares on the sides containing the right angle.

Proof

Figure 1.2.2Proving the Pythagorean theorem

The arrival of non-Euclidean geometry soon caused a stir in circles outside the mathematics
community. Fyodor Dostoevsky thought non-Euclidean geometry was interesting enough to
include in The Brothers Karamazov, first published in 1880. Early in the novel two of the
brothers, Ivan and Alyosha, get reacquainted at a tavern. Ivan discourages his younger brother
from thinking about whether God exists, arguing that if one cannot fathom non-Euclidean
geometry, then one has no hope of understanding questions about God. 2 

One of the first challenges of non-Euclidean geometry was to determine its logical consistency.
By changing Euclid's parallel postulate, was a system created that led to contradictory theorems?
In 1868, the Italian mathematician Enrico Beltrami (1835-1900) showed that the new non-
Euclidean geometry could be constructed within the Euclidean plane so that, as long as
Euclidean geometry was consistent, non-Euclidean geometry would be consistent as well. Non-
Euclidean geometry was thus placed on solid ground.

This text does not develop geometry as Euclid, Lobachevsky, and Bolyai did. Instead, we will
approach the subject as the German mathematician Felix Klein (1849-1925) did.

Whereas Euclid's approach to geometry was additive (he started with basic definitions and
axioms and proceeded to build a sequence of results depending on previous ones), Klein's
approach was subtractive. He started with a space and a group of allowable transformations of
that space. He then threw out all concepts that did not remain unchanged under these
transformations. Geometry, to Klein, is the study of objects and functions that remain unchanged
under allowable transformations.

Klein's approach to geometry, called the Erlangen Program after the university at which he
worked at the time, has the benefit that all three geometries (Euclidean, hyperbolic and elliptic)
emerge as special cases from a general space and a general set of transformations.

The next three chapters will be devoted to making sense of and working through the preceding
two paragraphs.
Like so much of mathematics, the development of non-Euclidean geometry anticipated
applications. Albert Einstein's theory of special relativity illustrates the power of Klein's
approach to geometry. Special relativity, says Einstein, is derived from the notion that the laws
of nature are invariant with respect to Lorentz transformations. 3 
Even with non-Euclidean geometry in hand, Euclidean geometry remains central to modern
mathematics because it is an excellent model for our local geometry. The angles of a triangle
drawn on this paper do add up to 180∘.∘. Even “galactic” triangles determined by the positions of
three nearby stars have angle sum indistinguishable from 180∘.∘.

However, on a larger scale, things might be different.

Maybe we live in a universe that looks flat (i.e., Euclidean) on smallish scales but is curved
globally. This is not so hard to believe. A bug living in a field on the surface of the Earth might
reasonably conclude he is living on an infinite plane. The bug cannot sense the fact that his flat,
visible world is just a small patch of a curved surface (Earth) living in three-dimensional space.
Likewise, our apparently Euclidean three-dimensional universe might be curving in some unseen
fourth dimension so that the global geometry of the universe might be non-Euclidean.

Under reasonable assumptions about space, hyperbolic, elliptic, and Euclidean geometry are the
only three possibilities for the global geometry of our universe. Researchers have spent
significant time poring over cosmological data in hopes of deciding which geometry is ours.
Deducing the geometry of the universe can tell us much about the shape of the universe and
perhaps whether it is finite. If the universe is elliptic, then it must be finite in volume. If it is
Euclidean or hyperbolic, then it can be either finite or infinite. Moreover, each geometry type
corresponds to a class of possible shapes. And, if that isn't exciting enough, the overall geometry
of the universe may be fundamentally connected to the fate of the universe. Clearly there is no
more grand application of geometry than to the fate of the universe!