Archimedes
Presumed Facts:
•  Native of Syracuse
•  Lived from 287 - 212 BC
•  Did most work with mathematics
Why is Archimedes important?
•  “Archimedes was indeed the Newton or
Gauss of his day; a man of such
brilliance, imagination, and insight that
both his contemporaries and the
generations that followed him uttered
his name in awe and reverence.”
•  Mario Livio
Why is Archimedes important?
•  “What distinguishes Archimedes’ work
in geometry from that of Euclid is that
Archimedes often presents his method
of discovery of the theorem and/or his
analysis of the situation before
presenting a rigorous synthetic proof.”
•  Victor J. Katz
Archimedean Area
•  To work on the task we did today,
Archimedes did not use any
trigonometry.
•  He used the Pythagorean theorem and
ratios.
•  He stopped at 96 sides - he is noted as
an exceptional calculator.
Fact or Fiction?
•  Eureka!
•  Able to burn ships of invading Roman
forces
•  Originator of calculus
•  Killed by a Roman soldier because he
would not stop working on mathematics
All I needed to know. . .
•  Twelve works survived. . .
•  Actually, make that thirteen
•  “Geometrical Solutions Derived from
Mechanics” (aka - The Method) was
discovered in 1906.
Prayers on Mathematics
•  A prayer book from
1229 was copied on to
older texts.
•  Since the new writing is
90º to the older writing,
it can be deciphered.
•  This prayer book had
several copies of
Archimedes work and
Hyperdies speeches.
Archimedes’ Palimpsest
•  Unknown history from 1229 to 1839
•  Catalogued in library of the Monastery of St.
Saba in 1840.
•  Described in a travelogue in 1846 as
containing mathematics (and moved to sister
house of monastery)
•  Photographed and translated (1906 - 1908)
by John Ludwig Heiberg
• Disappears until 1920s
• Sold in 1998 and put into care of museum
Archimedes’ Palimpsest
• Major work being
done to determine
original text
• New work showing
corrections to
Heiberg’s work
• Heiberg did not
publish diagrams;
these would have
been lost
What else is missing?
•  Biography of Archimedes by
Heracleides
•  Other works by Archimedes?
Sources
•  Archimedes Palimpsest Project. Retrieved
June 6, 2009 from http://
www.archimedespalimpsest.org/
palimpsest_history1.html
•  Katz, Victor J. (1993). A History of
Mathematics: An Introduction. New York:
HarperCollins College Publishers
•  Livio, Mario (2009). Is God A Mathematician?
New York: Simon & Schuster.
•  O’Connor, J. & Robinson, E. F. (1999).
Archimedes of Syracuse. Retrieved June 6,
2009 from http://www.gap-system.org/
~history/Biographies/Archimedes.html