History
The formula is credited to Heron (or Hero) of Alexandria, and a proof can be found in his book, Metrica, written c. 60. It has been suggested that Archimedes knew the formula over two centuries earlier, and since Metrica is a collection of the mathematical knowledge available in the ancient world, it is possible that the formula predates the reference given in that work.
A formula equivalent to Heron's namely:
- , where
was discovered by the Chinese independently of the Greeks. It was published in Shushu Jiuzhang (“Mathematical Treatise in Nine Sections”), written by Qin Jiushao and published in 1247.
Read more about this topic: Heron's Formula
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It gives me the greatest pleasure to say, as I do from the bottom of my heart, that never in the history of the country, in any crisis and under any conditions, have our Jewish fellow citizens failed to live up to the highest standards of citizenship and patriotism.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His function is too vague, his presence always seems one too many, his profit looks too easy, and even when you admit that he has a necessary function, you feel that this function is, as it were, a personification of something that in an ethical society would not need to exist. If people could deal with one another honestly, they would not need agents.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“Universal history is the history of a few metaphors.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)