Kept Alive in Arabic
Diocles's On Burning Mirrors
المرايا المحرقة لديوقليس
Only excerpts quoted by Eutocius were known until its Arabic translation was found in the Shrine Library at Mashhad and published by Gerald Toomer in 1976. It holds the first proof that a parabolic mirror gathers the sun's rays to a single point, and Ibn al-Haytham drew on it.
- Author
- Diocles (c. 200 BC; its Arabic translation was found at Mashhad)
- Field
- Optics
- What Arabic kept
- The whole book
- Greek title
- Περὶ πυρείων
- Arabic title
- كتاب ديوقليس في المرايا المحرقة
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Sources
- MacTutor, «Diocles»: «an Arabic translation of Diocles On burning mirrors has been found in the Shrine Library in Mashhad»
- Wikipedia, «Diocles (mathematician)»
- G. J. Toomer, Diocles: On Burning Mirrors. The Arabic Translation of the Lost Greek Original (Springer, 1976)
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