Page "Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia" Paragraph 4

His edition of Euclid in 1543, the first translation of the Elements into any modern European language, was especially significant.

For two centuries Euclid had been taught from two Latin translations taken from an Arabic source ; these contained errors in Book V, the Eudoxian theory of proportion, which rendered it unusable.

Tartaglia's edition was based on Zamberti's Latin translation of an uncorrupted Greek text, and rendered Book V correctly.

He also wrote the first modern and useful commentary on the theory.

Later, the theory was an essential tool for Galileo, just as it had been for Archimedes.