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Archimedes 213 Archimedes ARCHIMEDES ARCHIMEDES a fundamental study that lists sources for and titles of and a cylinder. Slaves were sent in with sickles ... thirteen of Archigenes' lost writings, and "Archigenes," in and when a passage to the place was opened we Pauly-Wissowa, Real- Encyclopddie der classischen Alter- approached the pedestal in front of us ; the epigram was tumswissenschaft, 11 (1896), cols . 484-486. traceable with about half of the lines legible, as the latter portion was worn away. JERRY STANNARD No surviving bust can be certainly identified as being ARCHIMEDES (b. Syracuse, ca. 287 B.c . ; d. Syra- of Archimedes, although a portrait on a Sicilian coin cuse, 212 B.c.), mathematics, mechanics. (whatever its date) is definitely his . A well-known Few details remain of the life of antiquity's most mosaic showing Archimedes before a calculating celebrated mathematician . A biography by his friend board with a Roman soldier standing over him was Heracleides has not survived . That his father was the once thought to be a genuine survival from Hercu- astronomer Phidias we know from Archimedes him- laneum but is now considered to be of Renaissance self in his The Sandreckoner (Sect . I. 9). Archimedes origin. was perhaps a kinsman of the ruler of Syracuse, King Mechanical Inventions . While Archimedes' place in Hieron II (as Plutarch and Polybius suggest) . At least the history of science rests on a remarkable collection he was on intimate terms with Hieron, to whose son of mathematical works, his reputation in antiquity Gelon he dedicated The Sandreckoner. Archimedes was also founded upon a series of mechanical contriv- almost certainly visited Alexandria, where no doubt ances which he is supposed to have invented and he studied with the successors of Euclid and played which the researches of A . G. Drachmann tend in an important role in the further development of part to confirm as Archimedean inventions . One of Euclidian mathematics . This visit is rendered almost these is the water snail, a screwlike device to raise certain by his custom of addressing his mathematical water for the purpose of irrigation, which, Diodorus discoveries to mathematicians who are known to have Siculus tells us (Bibl. hist., V, Ch. 37), Archimedes lived in Alexandria, such as Conon, Dositheus, and invented in Egypt . We are further told by Atheneus Eratosthenes . At any rate Archimedes returned to that an endless screw invented by Archimedes was Syracuse, composed most of his works there, and died used to launch a ship . He is also credited with the there during its capture by the Romans in 212 B.C . invention of the compound pulley . Some such device Archimedes' approximate birth date of 287 B.C . is is the object of the story told by Plutarch in his life conjectured on the basis of a remark by the Byzantine of Marcellus (Ch. XIV). When asked by Hieron to poet and historian of the twelfth century, John Tze- show him how a great weight could be moved by a tzes, who declared (Chiliad 2, hist. 35) that Archi- small force, Archimedes "fixed upon a three-masted medes "worked at geometry until old age, surviving merchantman of the royal fleet, which had been seventy-five years ." There are picturesque accounts dragged ashore by the great labors of many men, and of Archimedes' death by Livy, Plutarch, Valerius after putting on board many passengers and the Maximus, and Tzetzes, which vary in detail but agree customary freight, he seated himself at a distance that he was killed by a Roman soldier . In most from her, and without any great effort, but quietly accounts he is pictured as being engaged in mathe- setting in motion a system of compound pulleys, drew matics at the time of his death . Plutarch tells us her towards him smoothly and evenly, as though she (Marcellus, Ch. XVII) that Archimedes "is said to were gliding through the water ." It is in connection have asked his friends and kinsmen to place on his with this story that Plutarch tells us of the supposed grave after his death a cylinder circumscribing a remark of Archimedes to the effect that "if there were sphere, with an inscription giving the ratio by which another world, and he could go to it, he could move the including solid exceeds the included ." And indeed this one," a remark known in more familiar form from Cicero (see Tusculan Disputations, V, xxiii, 64-66), Pappus of Alexandria (Collectio, Bk. VIII, Prop . 11) : when he was Quaestor in Sicily in 75 B.c., "Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the . .. tracked out his grave . and found it enclosed earth ." Of doubtful authenticity is the oft-quoted all around and covered with brambles and thickets : for story told by Vitruvius (De architectura, Bk. IX, Ch. I remembered certain doggerel lines inscribed, as I had 3) that Hieron wished Archimedes to check whether heard, upon his tomb, which stated that a sphere along a certain crown or wreath was of pure gold, or with a cylinder had been put upon the top of his grave. whether the goldsmith had fraudulently alloyed it Accordingly, after taking a good look all around (for with some silver. there are a great quantity of graves at the Agrigentine Gate), I noticed a small column arising a little above While Archimedes was turning the problem over, he the bushes, on which there was the figure of a sphere chanced to come to the place of bathing, and there, 2 1 3 ARCHIMEDES ARCHIMEDES as he was sitting down in the tub, he noticed that the that ministers to the needs of life as ignoble and vulgar, amount of water which flowed over by the tub was equal he devoted his earnest efforts only to those studies the to the amount by which his body was immersed . This subtlety and charm of which are not affected by the indicated to him a method of solving the problem, and claims of necessity . These studies, he thought, are not he did not delay, but in his joy leapt out of the tub, to be compared with any others; in them, the subject and, rushing naked towards his home, he cried out in matter vies with the demonstration, the former supply- a loud voice that he had found what he sought, for as ing grandeur and beauty, the latter precision and sur- he ran he repeatedly shouted in Greek . heureka, passing power . For it is not possible to find in geometry heureka . more profound and difficult questions treated in simpler and purer terms . Some attribute this success to his Much more generally credited is the assertion of natural endowments ; others think it due to excessive Pappus that Archimedes wrote a book On Sphere- labor that everything he did seemed to have been making, a work which presumably told how to con- performed without labor and with ease. For no one struct a model planetarium representing the apparent could by his own efforts discover the proof, and yet as motions of the sun, moon, and planets, and perhaps soon as he learns it from him, he thinks he might have also a closed star globe representing the constella- discovered it himself, so smooth and rapid is the path by which he leads one to the desired conclusion tions. At least, we are told by Cicero (De re publica, . I, XIV, 21-22) that Marcellus took as booty from the Mathematical Works. The mathematical works of sack of Syracuse both types of instruments con- Archimedes that have come down to us can be loosely structed by Archimedes : classified in three groups (Arabic numbers have been added to indicate, where possible, their chronological For Gallus told us that the other kind of celestial globe order). The first group consists of those that have as [that Marcellus brought back and placed in the Temple of Virtue]. which was solid and contained no hollow their major objective the proof of theorems relative space, was a very early invention, the first one of that to the areas and volumes of figures bounded by kind having been constructed by Thales of Miletus . and curved lines and surfaces . In this group we can place later marked by Eudoxus of Cnidus ... with the con- On the Sphere and the Cylinder (5) ; On the Measure- stellations and stars which are fixed in the sky .... But ment of the Circle (9); On Conoids and Spheroids (7) ; this newer kind of globe, he said, on which were deline- On Spirals (6); and On the Quadrature of the Parabola ated the motions of the sun and moon and of those (2), which, in respect to its Propositions 1-17, belongs five stars which are called the wanderers . .. contained also to the second category of works . The second more than could be shown on a solid globe, and the group comprises works that lead to a Geometrical invention of Archimedes deserved special admiration analysis of statical and hydrostatical problems and because he had thought out a way to represent accu- the use of statics in geometry : On the Equilibrium of rately by a single device for turning the globe those various and divergent courses with their different rates Planes, Book 1 (1), Book 11 (3); On Floating Bodies of speed. (8) ; On the Method of Mechanical Theorems (4); and the aforementioned propositions from On the Quad- Finally, there are references by Polybius . Livy, Plu- rature of the Parabola (2). Miscellaneous mathemati- tarch, and others to fabulous ballistic instruments cal works constitute the third group : The Sandreck- constructed by Archimmedes to help repel Marcellus .
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  • Bibliography
    Bibliography Afshar, Iraj: Bibliographie des Catalogues des Manuscrits Persans. Tehran: 1958. Almagest: see Ptolemy. Apollonius: Apollonii Pergaei quae Graece exstant cum commentariis Eutocii (ed. J. L. Heiberg), 2 vols. Leipzig: 1891, 1893. Arberry, A. J. : The Chester Beatty Library, A Handlist of the Arabic Manuscripts, Vol. VII. Dublin: 1964. Archimedes: Archimedis Opera Omnia cum commentariis Eutocii, (iterum ed. J. L. Heiberg), 3 vols. Leipzig: 1910-1915. Archimedes: see also Heath. Aristarchus of Samos: On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and Moon (ed. T. Heath). Oxford: 1913. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics: Aristotelis Ethica Nicomachea (ed. I. Bywater). Oxford: 1894. Aristotle, Prior Analytics: Aristotelis Analytica Priora et Posteriora (ed. W. D. Ross and L. Minio-Paluello). Oxford: 1964. Autolycus: J. Mogenet, Autolycus de Pitane. Louvain, 1950 (Universite de Louvain, Recueil de Travaux d'Histoire et de Philologie, 3e. Serie Fasc. 37). Awad, Gurgis: "Arabic Manuscripts in American Libraries". Sumer 1, 237-277 (1951). (Arabic). Bachmann, Peter: Galens Abhandlung dariiber, dal3 der vorziigliche Arzt Philosoph sein mul3. Gottingen: 1965 (Ak. Wiss. Gottingen, Nachrichten Phil. -hist. Kl. 1965.1). Belger, C.: "Ein neues Fragmentum Mathematicum Bobiense". Hermes 16, 261-84 (1881). Boilot, D. J.: "L'oeuvre d'al-Beruni, essai bibliographique". Melanges de l'Institut Dominicain d'Etudes Orientales du Caire ~, 161-256 (1955). Bretschneider, C. A.: Die Geometrie und die Geometer vor Eukleides. Leipzig: 1870. 217 Bib Ziography Brockelmann, Carl: Geschichte der Arabischen Litteratur, zweite den Supplementbanden angepasste Aunage, 2 vols. Leiden: 1943, 1949 [GAL] [and] Supplementbande I-III. Leiden: 1937, 1938, 1942 [S]. Bulmer-Thomas, I.: "Conon of Samos". Dictionary of Scientific Biography III, (New York), 391 (1971).
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