Greek mathematician and mechanician, * Syracus about 285 B.C., † 212 B.C. killed by Roman soldiers during the conquest of Syracus.
After his studies in Alexandria (about 245 B.C.) Archimedes - meanwhile returned to Syracus - stayed in contact with the mathematicians there. His works on statics (strictly speaking about mechanics) are lost but can partly be reconstructed along general lines out of the works of Heron (from Alexandria) and Pappos. The derivation of the law of lever and the paper on loss of weight of swimming bodies (Archimedes’ principle, buoyancy) can be found within the pure mathematical works.
Archimedes great fame in antiquity based mainly upon his works on pure mathematics: calculations of the area (volume) as well as the centre of gravity of planes (bodies) which are bounded by conic sections (especially the quadrature of the parabolic segment and the cubature of the rotation ellipsoid as well as the segments of the rotation hyperboloid). For this he used the so called Exhaustion Method with the aid of the axiom from Eudoxos.
In his »Sand Calculations« he developed a method for the exponential notation of any large number.
Further works:
To his contemporaries, however, Archimedes was well-known especially because of his inventions on practical mechanics which are based upon the theoretical comprehension of the working of simple machines. The screw, the water screw conveyer or the Archimedes’ screw, the pulley block as well as his war machines (elevating machines, catapults) belong to this; legendary is the burning of the Roman fleet with the aid of large burning mirrors. Cicero still could admire his planetarium which was operated with water and which Marcellus had once carried as a war-booty to Rome.
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