This book aims to bring to light a very notable mathematician, Zenodorus (2nd century B.C.). The book is divided into 4 chapters.

The 1st chapter contains the minimal information that has survived regarding the life and work of Zenodorus, the father of the younger branch of mathematics, 'Calculus of Variations'. This chapter also includes the section 'The Isoperimetric Problems', so that the reader can be informed about the subject of the lost work of Zenodorus titled 'On Isoperimetric Figures'. Very few fragments from this work have survived from three sources, which are included in the following chapters 2, 3, and 4, respectively.

It was deemed necessary to emphasize in a separate section the influence of Zenodorus's work on mathematicians of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. A prominent position in this section is held by the inaugural speech of the great Greek mathematician Konstantinos Karatheodori on the topic 'The Origins of the Calculus of Variations'. This speech was given in August 1936 at Cambridge, Massachusetts (USA). The speaker considers Zenodorus to be the foundation of the 'Calculus of Variations'.

[Excerpt from the publisher's or edition's presentation text]