2 reference to Mazur's article

"The Discovery of Incommensurability" by Kurt von Fritz [ http://www.jstor.org/stable/1969021 ] indicates that the early Greek mathematicians did not explicitly use the Fundamental Theorem to prove the irrationality of √2. The proof known to Aristotle ("the diagonal of the square is incommensurate with the side, because odd numbers are equal to evens if it is supposed to be commensurate") uses a restricted version of the Fundamental Theorem, as explained in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadratic_irrational

Apparently, the explicit use of the Fundamental Theorem to prove the irrationality of 2 is post-Gauss. This is argued convincingly by Barry Mazur:

This fundamental theorem of arithmetic has a peculiar history. It is not trivial, and any of its proofs take work, and, indeed, are interesting in themselves. But it is nowhere stated in the ancient literature. It was used, implicitly, by the early modern mathematicians, Euler included, without anyone noticing that it actually required some verification, until Gauss finally realized the need for stating it explicitly, and proving it.

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"The Discovery of Incommensurability" by Kurt von Fritz [ http://www.jstor.org/stable/1969021 ] indicates that the early Greek mathematicians did not explicitly use the Fundamental Theorem to prove the irrationality of √2. The proof known to Aristotle ("the diagonal of the square is incommensurate with the side, because odd numbers are equal to evens if it is supposed to be commensurate") uses a restricted version of the Fundamental Theorem, as explained in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadratic_irrational

Apparently, the explicit use of the Fundamental Theorem is post-Gauss.