Velpry, Christian The secret of the pyramid. (Le sécret de la pyramide.) (French) Zbl 0657.01004 Diagrammes 18, CV1-CV17 (1988). In an extremely verbose text the author explains how in the Université de Paris 7 the conclusion was reached that formulae for volumes were derived and not merely rough estimations in pre-Greek and Greek mathematics. After 14 pages he decomposes a truncated pyramid with square basis, and obtains the factor “one third”. When a tetrahedron is decomposed in the same way this factor arises. The author arrived at the same drawing and reasoning which took the reviewer nine lines in 1945 [Nederl. Akad. Wet., Proc. 48, 206–210 (1945; Zbl 0060.00501), p. 210] in an addendum to the computation of the area of a circle, whereas J. Itard [XVIIth CIHS (Paris 1952)] treated the tetrahedron in the same way. This paper was reprinted in 1984 in Essais d’histoire des mathématiques. Réunis et introduits par R. Rashed (1984; Zbl 0558.01037). Reviewer: E. M. Bruins (Amsterdam) MSC: 01A15 History of mathematics of the indigenous cultures of Europe (pre-Greek, etc.) Keywords:Greek mathematics; tetrahedron Citations:Zbl 0060.00501; Zbl 0558.01037 PDFBibTeX XML Full Text: EuDML