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The Surface Area Of A Scalene Cone As Solved By Varignon, Leibniz, And Euler, Daniel J. Curtin

Euleriana

In a 1727 mathematical compendium, Pierre Varignon (1654-1722) published his solution to the problem of finding the surface area of a scalene (oblique) cone, one whose base is circular but whose vertex is off-center. The article after Varignon's in that publication was by Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716), who proposed improvements and even extended the solution to a base with any curve. When Leonhard Euler (1707-1783) published on the subject [E133] in 1750, he gently pointed out an error in Leibniz's solution, which he corrected, after extending Varignon's solution in the case of circular base. Euler then used Leibniz's approach to solve …