Euler’s Work on Spherical Geometry: An Overview with Comments

We review Euler’s work on spherical geometry. After an introduction concerning the general place that trigonometric formulae occupy in geometry, we start by the two memoirs of Euler on spherical trigonometry, in which he establishes the trigonometric formulae using different methods, namely, the calculus of variations in the first memoir, and classical methods of solid geometry in the other. In a third memoir, Euler gives several formulae for the area of a spherical triangle in terms of its side lengths (these are “spherical Heron formulae”). He uses this in the computation of numerical values of the solid angles of the five regular polyhedra, which is his goal in his memoir. We then review memoirs in which Euler systematically starts by establishing a theorem or a construction in Euclidean geometry and then proves an analogue in spherical geometry. We point out relations between Euler’s memoirs on spherical trigonometry and his works in astronomy, on the problem of drawing geographical maps, and in geomagnetism. We also review some other works of Euler involving spheres, including a memoir on the three-dimensional Apollonius problem and others concerning algebraic curves on the sphere. Even though these works are not properly on spherical geometry, they show Euler’s interests in various questions related to spheres and we think that they are worth highlighting in such an overview. Beyond spherical geometry, the reader is invited to discover in this chapter an important facet of the work of the great Leonhard Euler.