Friday, June 9, 2017

EUCLID THE GEOMETER

EUCLID THE GEOMETER Revered Samuel Ringgold Ward , an early black abolitionist, lecturer, who was educated at the African Free School in New York City, with other, free, African luminaries in black history, affirmatively wrote in 1855 that "Euclid had a black face, woolly hair, thick lips, a flat nose, and crooked ankles. He was the father of geometry." AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A FUGITIVE SLAVE (1855, 1970), p.182. This fact affirmed, corroborated the burgeoning suspicion that I had held about "Euclid", which I had believed to be the cognomen of a learned mathematics guild, rather than the work of just one man, due to the astonishing brilliance that I find to be exhibited serially in each chapter of EUCLID'S ELEMENTS, which I am now reading. This Euclid reference of Rev. Samuel Ward finds resonance, reinforcement below in an article that was written by an African American about the difficulties that racism imposes upon mathematics' aspiring and seasoned disciples of African descent. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/apr/12/black-mathematicians-john-derbyshire-fields-medal