An Appraisal of the Greek and Indian Approaches in Determining the Surface Area of a Sphere

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Authors

  • ,IN
  • ,IN
  • ,IN

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18311/jims/2018/18897

Keywords:

Archimedes, Bhāskara, Pedagogy, Sphere, Surface area, Volume.
Trigonometry

Abstract

While both the Greek and Indian civilisations have made immense contributions to the development of mathematics, their approaches to various problems widely differ, both in terms of the techniques employed by them and in their scope. We demonstrate this in the context of determining the surface area of a sphere. While the solution to this problem is attributed to Archimedes (3rd cent. BCE) in the Greek tradition, the first surviving proof in the Indian tradition can be found in Bhāskara's SiddhāntaÅ›iromaṇi (12th cent. CE). In this paper, we discuss the approaches taken by Archimedes and Bhāskara and compare their techniques from a mathematical as well as a pedagogical standpoint.

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Author Biographies

K. Mahesh

IIT Bombay

Aditya Kolachana

IIT Bombay

K. Ramasubramanian

IIT Bombay

Published

2018-01-04

How to Cite

Mahesh, K., Kolachana, A., & Ramasubramanian, K. (2018). An Appraisal of the Greek and Indian Approaches in Determining the Surface Area of a Sphere. The Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society, 85(1-2), 139–169. https://doi.org/10.18311/jims/2018/18897
Received 2018-01-02
Accepted 2018-01-02
Published 2018-01-04

 

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