ProofWiki:Mathematicians/Archimedes
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Known as Archimedes of Syracuse.
Greek mathematician, physicist, astronomer, engineer and general all-round inventor.
Perfected the method of exhaustion.
Contents |
Nationality
Greek
History
- Born: c. 287 BCE in Syracuse in Magna Graecia (in Sicily, now part of Italy)
- Died: c. 212 BCE in the Second Punic War. Supposed to have been by a drunken Roman soldier because either:
- He was contemplating a problem in geometry and was unwilling to be disturbed to answer a summons from the Roman general who had captured the city;
- He was killed trying to surrender to the Romans, and a soldier killed him to plunder his mathematical instruments, which the soldier thought were valuable.
Theorems and Definitions
- Archimedean Principle, otherwise known as the Archimedean Law
- Archimedes' Principle
- Archimedean Property
Inventions
- Archimedes Screw
Books and Papers
These works have survived in some form:
- On Plane Equilibriums (2 books)
- Quadrature of the Parabola
- The Method (which includes the calculation of the Volume of a Sphere)
- On the Sphere and Cylinder (2 books)
- On Conoids and Spheroids
- On Spirals
- On Floating Bodies (2 books)
- Measurement of a Circle
- The Sand Reckoner
The following works appear no longer to be with us:
- A work on semi-regular polyhedra, mentioned by Pappus
- A work on the number system proposed in The Sand Reckoner (mentioned by Archimedes himself)
- On balances and levers mentioned by Pappus
- A treatise about mirrors, mentioned by Theon
Commentaries of On Plane Equilibriums, On the Sphere and Cylinder and Measurement of a Circle were written by Eutocius of Ascalon.
See also
- Eric Temple Bell: Men of Mathematics (1937): Chapter $\text{II}$
- George F. Simmons: Calculus Gems (1992): Chapter $\text {A}.5$
