Apollonius was born in Perga and died in Alexandria, Egypt. As a youth he studied in Alexandria under the pupils of Euclid and subsequently taught at the University there. He visited Perganum of the Helenstinic kingdom in western Anatolia where a library like the one in Alexandria had been built. While there he wrote the first edition of the Conics. Book one through four contain a systematic account of the essential principles of conics. Which for the most part had been previously been set up by Euclid. A number of theorems in book three and four are new however.
Books five through seven are clearly original. His genius take highest flight in book five when he considers normals as minimum and maximum straight lines down from given points curve, discusses how many normals can be drawn from peticular point and leading at once to the Cartesian equation of the evolute of any conic.
The first four books of the Conics survive in the original and the next three in Arabic translation. Book eight is lost . The only other exact work of Apollonius is Cutting Off a Ration in Arabic translation. One more referred to by ancient writers is One On The Burning Mirror concerned Optics.
