Archimedes

Archimedes

Archimedes was the greatest mathematician of his age. whose theorems and philosophies became world known His father was Phidias, an astronomer. Archimedes was born c. 287 BC in the seaport city of Syracuse Sicily, which was then a colony of Magna Graecia.

Archimedes was a great mathematician of ancient times. His greatest contributions were in geometry. He also spent some time in Egypt, where he invented the machine now called Archimedes' screw, which was a mechanical water pump. Among his most famous works is Measurement of the Circle

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.

Archimedes made many contributions to geometry in his work on the areas of plane figures and on the areas of area and volumes of curved surfaces. His methods started the idea for calculus which was "invented" 2,000 years later by Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz. Archimedes proved that the volume of an inscribed sphere is two-thirds the volume of a circumscribed cylinder. He requested that this formula/diagram be inscribed on his tomb.

Archimedes' tomb had a carving of his favorite mathematical diagram, which was a sphere inside a cylinder of the same height and diameter.

His works (that survived) include:

• Measurement of a Circle
• On the Sphere and Cylinder
• On Spirals
• The Sand Reckoner

His inventions was many war machines used in the defense of Syracuse, compound pulley systems, Planetarium, water screw (possibly), water organ (possibly), burning mirrors.

Archimedes died c. 212 BC during the Second Punic War.in Syracuse when it was being sacked by a Roman army. He was killed by a Roman soldier who did not know who he was.