b. c. 450 B.C.

Greek mathematician who improved on the method of exhaustion, first introduced by Antiphon the Sophist (480-411 B.C.), for squaring the circle. Bryson's method involved inscribing a square in a circle; circumscribing a larger square; and placing a third square between the inscribed and circumscribed ones. It is not clear exactly how he used these forms, but he seems to have maintained that the circle was greater than all inscribed polygons and less than all circumscribed ones. By increasing the number of sides to the polygons, he appears to have suggested, it would be possible to diminish the difference between them and the circle.