Menaechmus was a Greek mathematician, thought to have been a pupil of Eudoxus, who is famed for his discovery of the conic sections and for being the first to show that ellipses, parabolas, and hyperbolas are formed by cutting a cone in a plane that is not parallel to the base. Menaechmus made his discoveries on conic sections while attempting, unsuccessfully, to solve the problem of duplicating the cube. It has also been suggested that he served as a tutor to Alexander the Great.