Introduction for Archimedes

Archimedes by Giuseppe Nogari

The Birth of Archimedes

In 287 BC, Archimedes was born in a seaport city near Syracuse, on Sicily, but he was a part of a self-governed colony of people who had come there from Greece. Archimedes's father was an astronomer and mathematician who is knowledgeable and sagacious. Archimedes, influenced by his family, had a keen interest in mathematics, astronomy and especially in ancient Greece.



Study Experience

In 267 BC, when Archimedes was eleven, Archimedes went to Alexandria, Egypt, that was the center for cultural growth and trade at that time. In Alexandria, literature, mathematics, astronomy and medical research were all well developed. Archimedes studied and lived there for many years, and learned a great deal of scientific knowledge about the East and the ancient Greeks which had a significant impact on his subsequent scientific career, laying the foundations for Archimedes' future scientific studies.


Personal achievements

Archimedes was a great physicist, mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, engineer and inventor of ancient Greece. In the area of physics, he developed the foundations of fluid dynamics and statics, and invented the Archimedes' principle, which will be discussed in later posts. In the area of mathematic, he calculated the area and volume of sphere by using "infinitesimals", and he computed the value of π. Moreover, he was famous for many mechanical designs, such as the screw pump, compound pulleys, and many different kinds of weapons.



The Death of Archimedes

In 212 BC, during the Second Punic War, the ancient Roman army invaded Syracuse, and Archimedes was killed by Roman soldiers at the age of seventy five. The tomb of Archimedes was said to be in Syracuse, on the island of Sicily. However in the present day, it is unknown where it is, or if the tombstone can still be located. It was also known that the tombstone was engraved with one of Archimedes' greatest accomplishments of a sphere inscribed in a cylinder since he had found that both the volume and the surface area of the sphere were two-thirds that of the cylinder.



Reference List
Dijksterhuis, E. J. (1956). Archimedes. Copenhagen, E. Munksgaard, 1956.

Jaeger, Mary, and Wesolowski. 2008. Archimedes and the Roman imagination.
[electronic resource]. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, c2008