source file: mills2.txt
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 10:11:32 -0800

Subject: RE: TUNING digest 998

From: Daniel Wolf <DJWOLF_MATERIAL@compuserve.com>

PAULE wrote:

''The idea of irrational numbers was too 
repugnant to the ancient Greeks''

This is simply a false statement. Pythagoreans were said to have known of
the irrationality of the square root of 2, in the 4th century BC, the
''three big problems'' were solved by Menaechmus and Dinostratus with conic
sections and the quadratrix (a transcendental curve), in the golden age of
Greek Mathematics (3rd century BC), all of the great figures (Archimedes,
Apollonius of Perga, Eratosthenes, Happarchus) used irrationals without
repugnance. 

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