Diocles was a Greek mathematician and geometer, who probably flourished sometime around the end of the second century and the beginning of the first century BC. He was probably the first to prove the focal property of a parabola. A mathematician is a person whose area of study and research is mathematics. ... A geometer is a mathematician whose area of study is geometry. ... (3rd century BC - 2nd century BC - 1st century BC - other centuries) (2nd millennium BC - 1st millennium BC - 1st millennium AD) Events BC 168 Battle of Pydna -- Macedonian phalanx defeated by Romans BC 148 Rome conquers Macedonia BC 146 Rome destroys Carthage in the Third Punic War BC 146 Rome conquers... (2nd century BC - 1st century BC - 1st century - other centuries) The 1st century BC starts on January 1, 100 BC and ends on December 31, 1 BC. An alternative name for this century is the last century BC. (2nd millennium BC - 1st millennium BC - 1st millennium) Events The Roman Republic... A parabola A parabola (from the Greek: παραβολή) is a conic section generated by the intersection of a cone, and a plane tangent to the cone or parallel to some plane tangent to the cone. ...

His name is associated with the geometric curve called the Cissoid of Diocles. It was used by Diocles for doubling the cube. The curve was alluded to by Proclus in his commentary on Euclid and attributed to Diolcles by Geminus as early as the beginning of the first century. In mathematics, the concept of a curve tries to capture the intuitive idea of a geometrical one-dimensional and continuous object. ... The cissoid of Diocles is an unbounded plane curve with a single cusp, which is symmetric about the line of tangency of the cusp, and whose pair of symmetrical branches both approach the same asymptote (but in opposite directions) as a point moving along the cissoid moves farther away from... Proclus Lycaeus (February 8, 412 - April 17, 487), surnamed The Successor (Greek Πρόκλος ὁ Διάδοχος Próklos ho Diádokhos), was a Greek Neoplatonist philosopher. ... Euclid of Alexandria (Greek: ) (circa 365–275 BC) was a Greek mathematician, now known as the father of geometry. He was probably alive during the reign of Ptolemy I, (306-233 B.C.E). ... -1...

Fragments of a work by Diocles titled On burning mirrors were preserved by Eutocius in his commentary of Archimedes' On the Sphere and the Cylinder. One of the fragments contains a solution, using conic sections to solve the problem of dividing a sphere by a plane, so that the resulting two volumes are a given ratio. This was equivalent to solving a certain cubic equation. Another fragment uses the cissoid to find two mean porportionals. Archimedes (Greek: ΑΡΧΙΜΗΔΗΣ, Arkhim&ecircas a Greek mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, physicist and engineer. ... In mathematics, a conic section (or just conic) is a curved locus of points, fby intersecting a cone with a plane. ... A cubic equation is a polynomial equation in which the highest occurring power of the unknown is the third power. ...

References

• Heath, Sir Thomas, A History of Greek Mathematics (2 Vols.) Dover Publications, Inc.(1980), Oxford (1921) ISBN 0486240738
• O'Connor, John J. and Edmund F. Robertson, Diocles [1] (http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Mathematicians/Diocles.htm), 1999.