Archimedes: The Man

Little is known about the life of Archimedes. He was born in Syracuse, Sicily around 287 BC. He studied at Alexandria in Egypt, where he spent most of his life in mathematical research. He studied with the successors of Euclid [Heath, xvi]. He was killed by a Roman soldier during the sack of Syracuse in 212 BC while Archimedes was staring at some figures he had drawn in the sand [Heath, xvii]. Archimedes is most famously known for his "Eureka moment." He was hired by Hieron, the ruler at the time, to determine whether or not the craftsmen who made the crown stole some of the gold in the process. Because the crown was irregularly shapped, Archimedes was unable to use traditional methods to figure out the crown's density. One day while bathing in the public bath house, Archimedes discovered that the water level rose when he got in the pool and realized that he could figure out the density of the king's crown by placing it in a bathtub and measuring the amount of displaced water. Upon this discovery, Archimedes ran from the bath house, shouting "Eureka! I have found it!" [Kaplan, 484]

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Archimedes recorded many of his mathematical achievements on scrolls. Only three books containing his work remain: Codices A, B, and C [Nelson, 43]. Unfortunately Codex C, the only one containing The Method and fragments of The Stomachion , wound up in a monastary where a monk scratched off the writing, folded the manuscript in half, and turned it into a prayer book. It wasn't until 1906 that the manuscript's significance was discovered. This palimpsest has been studied for decades, during which time historians discovered the Archimedes discussed the idea of infinity, a thought that was unheard of during his time [Nelson, 45].