The Life and Times of

Archimedes
By Harry, Ben and Niamh

Archimedes

Early life
Archimedes was born in the city of Syracuse on the island of Sicily in
287 BC. He was the son of an astronomer and mathematician named
Phidias. Aside from that, very little is known about the early life of
Archimedes or his family. Some maintain that he belonged to the
nobility of Syracuse, and that his family was in some way related to
that of Hiero II, king of Syracuse.
In the third century BC, Syracuse was a hub of commerce, art and
science. As a youth in Syracuse Archimedes developed his natural
curiosity and penchant for problem solving. When he learned as much
as he could from his teachers, Archimedes travelled to Egypt in order
to study in Alexandria. Founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BC,
Alexandria had, by Archimedes time, earned a

reputation for great learning and scholarship. Euclid was one of the
most well known scholars who lived in Alexandria prior to Archimedes
arrival in the city. Euclid was a renowned mathematician, perhaps best
remembered for collecting all of the existent Greek geometrical
treatises and assembling them in a logical and systematic order in his
book, The Elements. This compilation was a fundament to the study
of geometry for over 2000 years, and undoubtedly influenced the work
of Archimedes
After his studies in Alexandria , Archimedes returned to Syracuse and
pursued a life of thought and invention. Many apocryphal legends
record how Archimedes endeared himself to King Hiero II, discovering
solutions to problems that vexed the King.

Contribution to Maths
There is about nine extant treatises by Archimedes in Greek.The
principal results are on the Sphere and Cylinder.The surface area of
any sphere of radius r is four times that of its greatest circle and that
the volume of a sphere is two-thirds that of the cylinder in which it is
inscribed(leading immediately to the formula for the
volume).Archimedes left instructions for his tomb to be marked with a
sphere inscribed in a cylinder.
Measurement of the circle is a fragment of a longer work in which
pi,the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle,is shown to
lie between the limits of 223/71 and 22/7.Archimedes approach to
determining pi,which consists of

Contribution to Maths
inscribing and circumscribing regular polygons with a large number of
sides,was followed by everyone until the development of infinite series
expansions in India during the 15th Century and around the 17th
Century in Europe.
On Conoids and Spheroids deals with determining the volumes of the
segments of solids formed by the revolution of a conic
section(circle,ellipse,parabola,or hyperbola)about its axis.In modern
terms,those are problems of integration.On the Equilibrium of Planes is
mainly concerned with establishing the centres of gravity of various
rectilinear plane figures and segments of the parabola and the
paraboloid.The first look purports to establish the Law of the
Lever,and it is

Contribution to Maths
mainly on the basis of that treatise that Archimedes has been called
the founder of theoretical mechanics.
The Sand-Reckoner is a small treatise that is a jeu desprit written for
the layman-it is addressed to Gelon,son of Hieron-that nevertheless
contains some profoundly original mathematics.Its object to remedy
the inadequacies of the Greek numerical notation system by showing
how to express a huge number-the number of grains of sand that it
would take to fill the whole of the universe.

Contribution to Maths
Method Concerning Mechanical Theorems describes a process of
discovery in Mathematics.It is the sole surviving work from
antiquity,and one of the few from any period,that deals with with this
topic.In it Archimedes recounts how he used a mechanical method to
arrive at some of his key discoveries,including the area of a parabolic
segment and the surface area and volume of a sphere.
On Floating Bodies survives only partly in Greek,the rest in Medieval
Latin translation from Greek.It is the first known work on
hydrostatics,of which Archimedes is recognised as a founder.Its
purpose is to determine the positions that various solids will assume
when floating in a fluid,according to their form

Contribution to Maths
and the variation in their specific gravities.In the first book various
general principles are established,notably what has come to be known
as Archimedes principle:a solid denser than a fluid will,when
immersed in that fluid,be lighter by the weight of the fluid it displaces.
Archimedes mathematical proofs and presentation exhibit great
boldness and originality of thought on the one hand and extreme
rigour on the other,meeting the highest standards of contemporary
geometry.While the method shows that he arrived at the formulas for
the surface area and volume of a sphere by mechanical reasoning
involving infinitesimals,in his actual proofs of the results

Contribution to Maths
in Sphere and Cylinder he uses only the rigorous methods of
successive finite approximation that had been invented by Exodus of
Cnidus in the 4th Century BCE.

Archimedes Influence
Archimedes influence was small in ancient times, his results were
simply expressed as formulas and became mathematical
commonplaces and his work was not developed in any important way.
In the late 8th or 9th century his treatises were translated into arabic,
mathematicians of medieval Islam were inspired to equal or improve
his achievements particularly the determination of the volumes of
solids.
Archimedes influence is also evident in determining centres of gravity
and in geometric construction problems.

Archimedes Influence
Archimedes greatest influence was on mathematicians in the 16th
and 17th centuries when texts from Greece including the original
Editio Princeps in Basel 1544. The latin translation of his works by
Federico Commandino in 1588 contributed greatly to spreading his
knowledge
Mathematicians and physicists of the time reflected this in their work
including Galileo (1564-1642) and Johannes Kepler (1571-1630).

Archimedes Influence
David Rivalts edition and latin translation in 1615 of Archimedes
complete works and commentaries was hugely influential in the work
in some of the best mathematicians of the 17th century such as Ren
Descartes (1596-1650) and Pierre De Fermat (1601-1665) who with
background of rediscovered ancient mathematicians in which
Archimedes was prominent in development of maths in europe
It is unfortunate that Method remained unknown until the late 19th
century as perhaps Arabic and Renaissance for they might have
fulfilled Archimedes hopes that the work would prove useful in the
determining of theroms

Late Life
In his late life Archimedes played a vital role in the defense of
Syracuse against the siege laid by the Romans in 213 BCE. He
constructed war machines so effective that they long delayed the
capture of the city.
When Syracuse eventually fell to the roman general Marcus Claudius
Marcellus in the autumn of 212 or the spring of 211 BCE, Archimedes
was killed in the sack of the city.
Although far more details survived of Archimedes than any other
scientist, they are largely anecdotal.