Spherical Geometry and Its Applications introduces spherical geometry and its practical applications in a mathematically rigorous form. The text can serve as a course in spherical geometry for mathematics majors. Readers from various academic backgrounds can comprehend various approaches to the subject. The book introduces an axiomatic system for spherical geometry and uses it to prove the main theorems of the subject. It also provides an alternate approach using quaternions. The author illustrates how a traditional axiomatic system for plane geometry can be modified to produce a different geometric world – but a geometric world that is no less real than the geometric world of the plane. Features: A well-rounded introduction to spherical geometry Provides several proofs of some theorems to appeal to larger audiences Presents principal applications: the study of the surface of the earth, the study of stars and planets in the sky, the study of three- and four-dimensional polyhedra, mappings of the sphere, and crystallography Many problems are based on propositions from the ancient text Sphaerica of Menelaus

"The book includes introductions, terminology and biographical notes, bibliography, and an index and glossary" --from book jacket.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1875.

"Spherical trigonometry was at the heart of astronomy and ocean-going navigation for two millennia. The discipline was a mainstay of mathematics education for centuries, and it was a standard subject in high schools until the 1950s. Today, however, it is rarely taught. Heavenly Mathematics traces the rich history of this forgotten art, revealing how the cultures of classical Greece, medieval Islam, and the modern West used spherical trigonometry to chart the heavens and the Earth."--Jacket.

Despite its importance in the history of Ancient science, Menelaus’ Spherics is still by and large unknown. This treatise, which lies at the foundation of spherical geometry, is lost in Greek but has been preserved in its Arabic versions. The reader will find here, for the first time edited and translated into English, the essentials of this tradition, namely: a fragment of an early Arabic translation and the first Arabic redaction of the Spherics composed by al-Māhānī /al-Harawī, together with a historical and mathematical study of Menelaus’ treatise. With this book, a new and important part of the Greek and Arabic legacy to the history of mathematics comes to light. This book will be an indispensable acquisition for any reader interested in the history of Ancient geometry and science and, more generally, in Greek and Arabic science and culture.