Biography:Nicoteles of Cyrene

Nicoteles of Cyrene (Greek: Νικοτέλης ὁ Κυρηναῖος) (c. 250 BC) was a Greek mathematician from Cyrene. He is mentioned in the preface to Book 4 of the Conics of Apollonius, as criticising Conon concerning the maximum number of points with which a conic section can meet another conic section. Apollonius states that Nicoteles claimed that the case in which a conic section meets opposite sections could be solved, but had not demonstrated how.

It is possible that Nicoteles could be a misspelling of Nicomedes.

References

Bibliography

• Fried, Michael; Unguru, Sabetai (2001). Apollonius of Perga's Conica: Text, Context, Subtext. Mnemosyne. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-11977-2. 
• Heath, Thomas L., ed (2002). The Works of Archimedes. Mnemosyne. Mineola, N.Y: Dover Publications. pp. 189–190. ISBN 978-0-486-42084-4. 
• Fuentes González, P. P.; de Cyrène, Nicotélès (2005). Goulet, Richard. ed. Dictionnaire des Philosophes Antiques. 4. Paris: CNRS. pp. 702–703. ISBN 978-2-271-06386-1.