Ibrāhīm ibn Sinān: Apollonius Arabicus (Q2717217)

The author discusses Ibn Sinān's solution of the Apollonian problem of finding a circle touching three given circles (which turns out to be close to Vieta's). The main conclusion to be drawn is that Ibn Sinān had no access to Apollonius's work on the subject since his methods are very different from the lemmata which Pappus quotes in the latter's name. However, in some form or another, Ibn Sinān had access to most of the works of Apollonius enumerated by Pappus.NEWLINENEWLINEFor the entire collection see [Zbl 0959.00025].