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Archimedes
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Archimedes was born c. 287 BC in the seaport city of Syracuse, Sicily, at that time a colony of Magna Graecia. The date of birth is based on an assertion by the Byzantine Greek historian John Tzetzes that Archimedes lived for 75 years.[6] In The Sand Reckoner, Archimedes gives his father's name as Phidias, an astronomer about whom nothing is known. Plutarch wrote in his Parallel Lives that Archimedes was related to King Hiero II, the ruler of Syracuse.[7] A biography of Archimedes was written by his friend Heracleides but this work has been lost, leaving the details of his life obscure.[8] It is unknown, for instance, whether he ever married or had children. During his youth Archimedes may have studied in Alexandria, Egypt, where Conon of Samos and Eratosthenes of Cyrene were contemporaries. He referred to Conon of Samos as his friend, while two of his works (The Sand Reckoner and the Cattle Problem) have introductions addressed to Eratosthenes.
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Archimedes' first love was mathematics. He would often spend days so intently fixed on solving a problem that he neglected both food and his person to the point that his friends would carry him kicking and fighting to the bath. He often stooped to the ground to work mathematical problems by drawing figures in the dirt. He is even said to have carried a small wooden tray filled with sand, which he used to draw his figures and work on his mathematical problems. This tray would have been Archimedes' version of the modern lap top computer. Of course, such a device is not without its problems: A strong wind could blow away a brilliant proof; a bully could kick a theorem into your face, and should a cat wander into the tray, the outcome could be too disgusting to contemplate.
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Archimedes discovered buoyancy by a rather interesting story. He did this by helping his friend, King Hiero of Syracuse, trying to figure out the Golden Crown Mystery. The Golden Crown Mystery was a mystery about the king sending a certain amount of gold to the goldsmith for a new crown. When the crown was returned finished, the king thought that not all the gold that was sent to the goldsmith was in his crown. The night of this the king told Archimedes of his problem. When Archimedes went home he discovered what is now known as the Law of Hydrostatics (buoyancy).
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Little is known of his personal life, and the figure shown here, widely purported to be Archimedes, isn't even him (more about that later), but Archimedes changed the course of scientific history. This mathematician, physicist and engineer was born around 287 BC in Syracuse (Siracusa), the son of Phidias, an astronomer. Archimedes was probably related to the Syracusan ruler Hieron II and his son, Gelon. As a young man, Archimedes studied in Alexandria, a centre of learning, and spent some time in Greece before returning to his native Sicily, where his experiments were as practical as they were theoretical. Being something of an astronomer, he invented a sphere to mimic the movements of celestial bodies. This was described by Cicero, who saw it. When Archimedes was born, Greek was still the scholarly and vernacular language of most of the central and eastern Mediterranean, but the rapidly expanding Roman Empire sought to annex Sicily to its dominions, in the process amalgamating Greek culture with its own.
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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.
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Archimedes, a mathematician who determined the exact value of pi, is ... known for his strategic role in ancient war and the development of military techniques. First the Carthaginians, then the Romans besieged Syracuse, Sicily, the birthplace of Archimedes. While in the end Rome won and killed him (during the second Punic War, in 212), Archimedes put up a good, almost single-handed defense of his homeland. First he invented an engine that threw stones at the enemy, then he used glass to set the Roman ships on fire -- maybe. After he was killed, the Romans had him buried with honor.
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