e ideas have been found. The most glaring one deals with his fifth postulate, also known as the parallel postulate. The proposition states that for a straight line and a point not on the line, there is exactly one line that passes through the point parallel to the original line. Euclid was unable to prove this statement and needing it for his proofs, so he assumed it as true. Future mathematicians could not accept such a statement was unproveable and spent centuries looking for an answer. Only with the onset of non- Euclidean geometry, that replaces the statement with postulates that assume different numbers of parallel lines, has the statement been generally accepted as necessary. However, despite these problems, Euclid holds the distinction of being one of the first persons to attempt to standardize mathematics and set it upon a foundation of proofs. His work acted as a springboard for future generations. ...
