![]() ![]() This quote is often given in Latin as "Noli turbare circulos meos," but there is no reliable evidence that Archimedes uttered these words and they do not appear in the account given by Plutarch. The last words attributed to Archimedes are "Do not disturb my circles" (Greek: μή μου τούς κύκλους τάραττε), a reference to the circles in the mathematical drawing that he was supposedly studying when disturbed by the Roman soldier. General Marcellus was reportedly angered by the death of Archimedes, as he considered him a valuable scientific asset and had ordered that he not be harmed. According to this story, Archimedes was carrying mathematical instruments, and was killed because the soldier thought that they were valuable items. Plutarch also gives a lesser-known account of the death of Archimedes which suggests that he may have been killed while attempting to surrender to a Roman soldier. The soldier was enraged by this, and killed Archimedes with his sword. A Roman soldier commanded him to come and meet General Marcellus but he declined, saying that he had to finish working on the problem. According to the popular account given by Plutarch, Archimedes was contemplating a mathematical diagram when the city was captured. 212 BC during the Second Punic War, when Roman forces under General Marcus Claudius Marcellus captured the city of Syracuse after a two-year-long siege. ![]() He referred to Conon of Samos as his friend, while two of his works (The Method of Mechanical Theorems and the Cattle Problem) have introductions addressed to Eratosthenes.Īrchimedes died c. During his youth Archimedes may have studied in Alexandria, Egypt, where Conon of Samos and Eratosthenes of Cyrene were contemporaries. It is unknown, for instance, whether he ever married or had children. A biography of Archimedes was written by his friend Heracleides but this work has been lost, leaving the details of his life obscure. Plutarch wrote in his Parallel Lives that Archimedes was related to King Hiero II, the ruler of Syracuse. In The Sand Reckoner, Archimedes gives his father's name as Phidias, an astronomer about whom nothing is known. The date of birth is based on a statement by the Byzantine Greek historian John Tzetzes that Archimedes lived for 75 years. 287 BC in the seaport city of Syracuse, Sicily, at that time a self-governing colony in Magna Graecia. The relatively few copies of Archimedes' written work that survived through the Middle Ages were an influential source of ideas for scientists during the Renaissance, while the discovery in 1906 of previously unknown works by Archimedes in the Archimedes Palimpsest has provided new insights into how he obtained mathematical results.Īrchimedes was born c. 530 AD by Isidore of Miletus, while commentaries on the works of Archimedes written by Eutocius in the sixth century AD opened them to wider readership for the first time. Mathematicians from Alexandria read and quoted him, but the first comprehensive compilation was not made until c. Unlike his inventions, the mathematical writings of Archimedes were little known in antiquity. Archimedes had proven that the sphere has two thirds of the volume and surface area of the cylinder (including the bases of the latter), and regarded this as the greatest of his mathematical achievements. Cicero describes visiting the tomb of Archimedes, which was surmounted by a sphere inscribed within a cylinder. He also defined the spiral bearing his name, formulae for the volumes of surfaces of revolution and an ingenious system for expressing very large numbers.Īrchimedes died during the Siege of Syracuse when he was killed by a Roman soldier despite orders that he should not be harmed. He used the method of exhaustion to calculate the area under the arc of a parabola with the summation of an infinite series, and gave a remarkably accurate approximation of pi. Modern experiments have tested claims that Archimedes designed machines capable of lifting attacking ships out of the water and setting ships on fire using an array of mirrors.Īrchimedes is generally considered to be the greatest mathematician of antiquity and one of the greatest of all time. He is credited with designing innovative machines, including siege engines and the screw pump that bears his name. ![]() Among his advances in physics are the foundations of hydrostatics, statics and an explanation of the principle of the lever. Although few details of his life are known, he is regarded as one of the leading scientists in classical antiquity. 212 BC) was a Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor, and astronomer. Archimedes of Syracuse (Greek: Ἀρχιμήδης c. ![]()
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