Playfair's axiom
Axioma de Playfair
- Date
- 1795 · confidence high
- Place
- Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom
- Credited to
- John Playfair
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What was discovered
An axiom equivalent to Euclid's fifth postulate, the parallel postulate, stating that given a line and a point not on it, at most one line parallel to the first can be drawn through that point; formulated by Scottish mathematician John Playfair as a more intuitive alternative to Euclid's original postulate.
What it led to
- Became the standard modern formulation of the parallel postulate in textbooks
- Clarified the logical status of Euclidean geometry
- Central to later investigations into the postulate's independence and non-Euclidean geometry