Archimedes was a mathematician, inventor, and astronomer who was one of the most celebrated mathematicians of all time. He was famous for getting so absorbed in his studies, that he forgot about social conventions. Famously, he is said to have realised a principle of mathematics when he saw the displaced water after getting in the bath. So excited at realising the importance of this he shouted &#;Eureka&#; and rushed out into the street unclothed. We cannot be certain this entertaining anecdote is % true, but he was a genuinely great mathematician, who in many ways was centuries ahead of his contemporaries. His works were later rediscovered by both Arabic and Renaissance scientists who first replicated his results and then built on them.
Archimedes was born in Syracuse, a Greek city-state in Sicily. He was educated at Alexandria, Egypt &#; famed for its knowledge and learning. He then returned to Syracuse where he became famed as both a mathematician, inventor, astronomer and philosopher. He continued to correspond with mathematicians back in Alexandria, and even during his lifetime, he gained a strong reputation for being a mathematical genius. Archimedes was close to the rul
Archimedes ( BC)
“The Sand-Reckoner”
translated by Thomas L. Heath
Much of The Sand-Reckoner is taken up with geometric proofs. In the two excerpts below, Archimedes begins by offering an alternative definition of the universe: it is not centered on the earth, but on the sun. He then explains the new numbering system needed to calculate the volume of this heliocentric universe.
Thomas L. Heath, a Cambridge-educated British civil servant, translated both Archimedes and Euclid into English. His translation of Euclid’s Elements is still the most commonly used of this classic text.
In the excerpts below, Heath has transformed Archimedes’s Greek numeral system into exponential numbers readable by English speakers. In places, he has retained the Greek in brackets.
Because this website does not support exponential notation, the exponential numbers have been indicated using the strike-through (so, for example, 10 to the second power would be written 10).
The Heliocentric Universe
&#;Now you are aware that “universe” is the name given by most astronomers to the sphere whose centre is the centre of the earth and whose radius is equal to the straight line between the centre of th
The Sand Reckoner
Archimedes, an Ancient Greek mathematician of the 3rd century BC, was a brilliant mind who set out to determine the upper bound for the number of grains of sand that fit into the universe. He did this in his work, "The Sand Reckoner," or 'Psammites' in Greek, where he estimated the size of the universe and invented a way to talk about extremely large numbers.
Archimedes tackled this problem with great zeal, attempting to determine the size of the universe according to the contemporary model. To achieve this, he came up with an ingenious idea that is still relevant today: inventing a way to talk about extremely large numbers. By introducing this concept, Archimedes was able to conceptualize numbers that were otherwise impossible to express, which allowed him to explore his theories about the universe further.
"The Sand Reckoner" is a piece of work that is approximately eight pages long in translation and is considered to be the most accessible of Archimedes' works. In many ways, it is the first research-expository paper, presenting a combination of research and explanations that are easy to understand.
The work was addressed to Gelo II, the Syracusan king
Quick Info
Syracuse, Sicily (now Italy)
Syracuse, Sicily (now Italy)
Biography
Archimedes' father was Phidias, an astronomer. We know nothing else about Phidias other than this one fact and we only know this since Archimedes gives us this information in one of his works, The Sandreckoner. A friend of Archimedes called Heracleides wrote a biography of him but sadly this work is lost. How our knowledge of Archimedes would be transformed if this lost work were ever found, or even extracts found in the writing of others.Archimedes was a native of Syracuse, Sicily. It is reported by some authors that he visited Egypt and there invented a device now known as Archimedes' screw. This is a pump, still used in many parts of the world. It is highly likely that, when he was a young man, Archimedes studied with the successors of Euclid in Alexandria. Certain
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