After the death of Alexander, Egypt fell into the hands of his famous
general, Ptolemy, under whose care the city became one of the most
important on the Mediterranean. He founded and maintained a museum, an
establishment that corresponded very much to a modern university, for
the study of literature, science and the arts. Under his successors,
particularly the third Ptolemy, the museum developed, more especially
the library, which contained more than half a million volumes. The
teachers were drawn from all centres, and the names of the great
Alexandrians are among the most famous in the history of human
knowledge, including such men as Archimedes, Euclid, Strabo and Ptolemy.
In mechanics and physics, astronomy, mathematics and optics, the work
of the Alexandrians constitutes the basis of a large part of our modern
knowledge. The school-boy of today--or at any rate of my day--studies
the identical problems that were set by Euclid 300 B.C., and the student
of physics still turns to Archimedes and Heron, and the astronomer to
Eratosthenes and Hipparchus. To those of you who wish to get a brief
review of the state of science in the Alexandrian School I would
recommend the chapter in Vol. I of Dannemann's history.
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