Science · c. 300 BCE
Euclid and the Library of Alexandria
Alexandria (Egypt)
In Alexandria, Ptolemy I founded the Mouseion, a research institute whose great library, probably established under Ptolemy II (r. 285–246 BCE), gathered somewhere between tens and hundreds of thousands of scrolls.
Working in the city around 300 BCE, Euclid wrote the Elements, 13 books that build geometry and number theory step by step from definitions and postulates; later scholars there included Eratosthenes, who calculated the Earth's circumference.
Why it mattered
The Elements was the core of mathematics teaching for some 2,000 years and has appeared in more than 1,000 printed editions, while the library became a lasting symbol of the ambition to collect all knowledge in one place.
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