Poncelet's discovery of homology

Abstract

Homology was among the concepts introduced in Jean Victor Poncelet's 1822 Traité des Propriétés Projectives des Figures. Homology is a projective transformation which has an axis, a line of fixed points. The Traité develops a straightedge construction of points under homology, essentially that found in work on perspective drawing and by Phillipe de la Hire, 1673. However, Poncelet's very distinct path to homology was through similitude, where the radical axis of a pair of circles became the axis of homology. We end with Poncelet's application of homology involving the focus of a conic section.