Archimedes of Syracuse
Archimedes was the greatest mathematician of antiquity and was killed by a Roman soldier while working on a diagram. Born at Syracuse in Sicily around 287 BC, he was the son of an astronomer, probably studied at Alexandria, and corresponded with mathematicians there for the rest of his life. His mathematics anticipated the calculus by nearly two millennia. He calculated pi to lie between 3.1408 and 3.1429 by inscribing and circumscribing 96-sided polygons, found the area of a parabolic segment and the surface and volume of a sphere by a method of exhaustion, and showed that a sphere's volume is two thirds that of its enclosing cylinder — a result he asked to have carved on his tomb. He founded hydrostatics with On Floating Bodies, stating the principle that a body displaces its own weight of fluid. The story of the crown, the bath and the shout of eureka comes from Vitruvius two centuries later. He established the law of the lever and is quoted as saying that given a place to stand he could move the earth. He devised the water-raising screw that bears his name, compound pulleys, and the planetarium later taken to Rome. When Rome besieged Syracuse from 213 BC he designed the defences: catapults ranged for different distances, and the claw, a crane that hooked ships and capsized them. The burning mirrors are probably legend. The city fell in 212 BC. Marcellus had ordered him spared; a soldier killed him anyway, reportedly after Archimedes told him not to disturb his circles.
- Lived: 287 BCE – 212 BCE
- Nationality: Greek
- Roles: scientist, mathematician, engineer
