Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.14631

    Diagram concerning the squaring of the circle and other problems

    Date
    8 April 1685
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Manuscript page number
    p85
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (page): 320mm
    width (page): 200mm
    Subject
    Description
    Diagram concerning the squaring of the circle, doubling the cube, trisecting an angle, and inscribing geometrically a regular heptagon in a circle, in a paper by St George Ashe of the Dublin Philosophical Society, which was read at the Royal Society at its meeting on 8 April 1685. Ashe reviewed 'possible' solutions to these intractable problems, but his aim was to consider what use such solutions might have, and whether what is already known might in fact serve such uses.

    This diagram is copied at LBC/10/111. Another version can be found at EL/A/34/011.
    Object history
    At the meeting of the Royal Society on 8 April 1685, ‘A discourse was read, which had been presented to the Dublin Society by Mr. St. George Ashe, fellow of Trinity-College there, and of that Society, stating of what use in mathematics the solution of the problems of squaring the circle, doubling the cube, trisecting an angle, inscribing geometrically a regular heptagon in a circle, etc. would be’ (Birch 4:389).
    Related fellows
    St George Ashe (1658 - 1718, British) , Mathematician
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > Ireland
    Powered by CollectionsIndex+/CollectionsOnline