exist. All these solids became the subjects of investigation by the Platonic school. One result of these inquiries was epoch-making. Menæchmus, an associate of Plato and pupil of Eudoxus, invented the conic sections, which, in course of only a century, raised geometry to the loftiest height which it was destined to reach during antiquity. Menæchmus cut three kinds of cones, the 'right-angled,' 'acute-angled,' and 'obtuse-angled,' by planes at right angles to a side of the cones, and thus obtained the three sections which we now call the parabola, ellipse, and hyperbola. Judging from the two very elegant solutions of the "Delian Problem" by means of intersections of these curves, Menæchmus must have succeeded well in investigating their properties.
Another great geometer was Dinostratus, the brother of Menæchmus and pupil of Plato. Celebrated is his mechanical solution of the quadrature of the circle, by means of the quadratrix of Hippias.
Perhaps the most brilliant mathematician of this period was Eudoxus. He was born at Cnidus about 408 B.C., studied under Archytas, and later, for two months, under Plato. He was imbued with a true spirit of scientific inquiry, and has been called the father of scientific astronomical observation. From the fragmentary notices of his astronomical researches, found in later writers, Ideler and Schiaparelli succeeded in reconstructing the system of Eudoxus with its celebrated representation of planetary motions by "concentric spheres." Eudoxus had a school at Cyzicus, went with his pupils to Athens, visiting Plato, and then returned to Cyzicus, where he died 355 B.C. The fame of the academy of Plato is to a large extent due to Eudoxus's pupils of the school at Cyzicus, among whom are Menæchmus, Dinostratus, Athenæus, and Helicon. Diogenes Laertius describes Eudoxus as astronomer, physician, legislator, as well as geometer. The Eudemian Summary
