Mathematicians
Archimedes
Also Known As Archimedes of Syracuse
Ancient
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Greek mathematician, physicist and engineer of Syracuse, widely regarded as antiquity's greatest mathematician. He calculated a tight bound on pi using inscribed and circumscribed polygons, worked out formulas for the area and volume of the sphere and cylinder (the achievement he asked to have carved on his own tomb), pioneered the method of exhaustion as a forerunner of integral calculus, and founded the mathematical study of levers and buoyancy (Archimedes' principle). He was killed during the Roman siege and sack of Syracuse in 212 BCE.
Facts
Death PlaceSyracuse, Sicily, killed by a Roman soldier during the sack of the city despite orders that he be spared 1 Nationality / Culture Defining ContributionThe method of exhaustion for computing areas, volumes and a bound on pi, anticipating integral calculus by nearly two thousand years; also the founding of mathematical mechanics and hydrostatics. 1 Notable WorkOn the Sphere and Cylinder; Measurement of a Circle; On Floating Bodies 1 AwardRequested that a sphere inscribed in a cylinder be carved on his tomb, commemorating his own proof of the ratio between their volumes; lunar features (Crater Archimedes, Montes Archimedes, Rimae Archimedes) are named in his honor. 2 Disputed
Birth YearCalculated from the Byzantine writer John Tzetzes' claim, centuries later, that Archimedes lived 75 years; not independently confirmed. Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Limit, Concepts Archimedes applied the Greek method of exhaustion, the ancient ancestor of the limit concept, with particular skill, for example to find the area of a parabolic segment; the method itself avoided limits and infinitesimals in the modern sense, reasoning instead by a chain of contradiction.
Pi, Concepts Gave the first rigorous method for bounding pi's value, c. 250 BCE.
In Branch
Sources
1. MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
University of St Andrews, School of Mathematics and StatisticsAssociated With: Limit, https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Eudoxus/Quote, Associated With: Limit, https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Eudoxus/
Archimedes went on to use Eudoxus's method of exhaustion to prove a remarkable collection of theorems.
2. Archimedes of Syracuse, Biography (MacTutor History of Mathematics)
University of St Andrews, MacTutor History of Mathematics Archiveopening biography sectionView the Source 2. Archimedes of Syracuse, Biography (MacTutor History of Mathematics)
University of St Andrews, MacTutor History of Mathematics ArchiveBiography/Honours sectionQuote, Biography/Honours section
for a representation of this together with his result on the ratio of the two, to be inscribed on his tomb
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