Archimedes Biography
Greek Inventor, Mathematician, Physicist, Engineer, Scientist
Best known for "Archimedes Principle," he was a legendary genius who invented pulleys and levers for giant ships, built the first water pump, created a planetarium to show motions of planets, and a machine to fire burning pitch at the enemy ships, among others.
An inscription of a sphere and cylinder is found in his tomb, a symbol of his proudest discoveries in geometry.
Life of Archimedes
Archimedes was born in 287BC in Syracuse in Sicily, then a Greek colony. He lived during the reign of intellectual rulers King Heiron II and his son King Gelon. He may have been Gelon's tutor. Archimedes went to Alexandria in Egypt, at that time the greatest centre of learning in the ancient world, and the city itself was founded by Alexander the Great half a century earlier that time.
He undoubtedly met Eratosthenes, the brilliant thinker. Although Archimedes got his training in science and mathematics in Alexandria, he was also employed as an engineer, and probably, it was there he invented his famous screw for pumping water.
Upon returning to Syracuse, he stayed there in his lifetime - studying, inventing, and thinking. He is famous for the quote "Eureka!" (I've got it!) about his laying out the groundbreaking foundation of hydrostatics – how things float.
The Mathematician
Archimedes went further and showed that the ratio of weights to one another goes down in exact mathematical proportion to the distance from the pivot of the seesaw – and proved it mathematically. By the same token, he also proved mathematically that every object has a centre of gravity, that is, a single point of balance from which all its weight seems to hang.
In his famous letter called "The Sand Reckoner" which he wrote to his protégé King Gelon, Archimedes showed that mathematics is capable of dealing with large numbers, quite unimaginable those ancient days.
Geometric Insights
Besides looking at things in a mathematical way, Archimedes looked at mathematical problems in a practical way, including his solutions to geometric problems in relation to volumes and areas of regular shapes such as spheres and cones. What is now a known formula was an abstraction in the Greek tradition in his day. For example, that the surface area of a sphere is equal to four times the area of its greatest circle with the same radius.
Final Years and Legacy of Archimedes
He was an old man by the time the Roman fleets besieged his hometown Syracuse in 212BC, nearly 80 years old, although still inventive. The Roman commander Marcellus was so impressed by his scientist work that he insisted the scientist should be treated well but apparently the message didn't get through to the Roman officer who killed Archimedes just the same when he stormed his room.
Most of Archimedes's work was lost. Remarkably, one major work was rediscovered in 1906, when the Danish Philologist J.L. Heiberg found that a medieval parchment discovered in a Jerusalem monastery was a palimpsest, a scroll in which the original writing has been partially erased so that it can used for a new text, and beneath the Greek orthodox scriptures were hidden copies of his various key works.
More of his work was also kept alive by Arab mathematicians through the Dark Ages, used when the scientific revolution began in the 17th century Europe. Both Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton acknowledged Archimedes as the greatest of all scientific giants.
Sources:
Chambers Biographical Dictionary, edited by Una McGovern, Chambers, 2002
Farndon, John, etal. The Great Scientists. Capella / Arcturus, 2005
Verma, Surendra. The Little Book of Scientific Principles , Theories & Things. New Holland, 2005
