ABSTRACT
Such recursive packing was already conceived around the 200 B.C. by Apollonius of Perga (269-190 B.C.), a mathematician of the Alexandrine school. He is classified with Euclid and Archimedes among the great mathematicians of the Greek era. His principal legacy is the theory of those curves known as conic sections (ellipse, parabola, hyperbola). He brought it to such perfection that 1800 years passed before Descartes recast it in terms of his new methods.
