Archimedes was a Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor, and astronomer. He is credited with designing innovative machines, such as his screw pump, compound pulleys, and defensive war machines to protect his native Syracuse from invasion. He died during the Siege of Syracuse, where he was killed by a Roman soldier despite orders that he should not be harmed. Unlike his inventions, the mathematical writings of Archimedes were little known in antiquity.
About Archimedes in brief
Archimedes was a Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor, and astronomer. Considered to be the greatest mathematician of ancient history, and one of the greatest of all time. He is credited with designing innovative machines, such as his screw pump, compound pulleys, and defensive war machines to protect his native Syracuse from invasion. He died during the Siege of Syracuse, where he was killed by a Roman soldier despite orders that he should not be harmed. Unlike his inventions, the mathematical writings of Archimedes were little known in antiquity. The relatively few copies of his written work that survived through the Middle Ages were an influential source of ideas for scientists during the Renaissance. The discovery in 1906 of previously unknown works by archimedes in the Archimede Palimpsest has provided new insights into how he obtained mathematical results. In The Sand Reckoner, he gives his father’s name as Phidias, an astronomer about whom nothing else is known. He was related to King Hiero II, the ruler of Syracuse. He may have studied in Alexandria, Egypt, where Conon of Samos and Eratosthenes of Cyrene were contemporaries. He referred to Conon as his friend, while two of his works have introductions addressed to Eratsthenes. He also wrote about hydrostatics and statics, including an explanation of the principle of the lever. His other mathematical achievements include deriving an accurate approximation of pi; defining and investigating the spiral that now bears his name; and creating a system using exponentiation for expressing very large numbers.
His last words are attributed to geometrical Briareus: “Do not disturb my circles in my last reference to the circles in which I have been working”. The date of his birth is based on a statement by the Byzantine Greek historian John Tzetzes that Archimeds lived for 75 years. He lived c. 287 BC in the seaport city of Syracuse,. at that time a self-governing colony in Magna Graecia. The first comprehensive compilation was not made until c. 530 AD by Isidore of Miletus in Byzantine Constantinople, while commentaries on his works by Eutocius in the 6th century AD opened them to wider readership for the first time. In the Second Punic War, when Roman forces under General Marcus Claudius Marcellus captured the city of. Syracuse after a two-year-long siege, he was ordered not to surrender. He declined, and was also killed with his sword by the general. Plutarch gives a lesser-known account which suggests that he may have been killed while attempting to surrender to the Roman soldier. According to this story, Archimids was carrying mathematical instruments and was killed because the soldier thought that they were valuable items. The soldier reportedly considered him a valuable scientific asset and ordered him not to be harmed, as he considered him to be a valuable asset.
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This page is based on the article Archimedes published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 04, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
