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ARCHIMEDES, some facts about the scholar
2025-01-16 16:04:04 / MISTERE&KURIOZITETE
"Give me a point of support and I will lift the world," said the scholar Archimedes to King Geron II of Syracuse. The king immediately put him to the test and the wise man agreed: he saw the ship Syracuse in the harbor yard, filled with all sorts of goods to send to the king of Egypt, and he invented a system of levers and carts with which, to everyone's surprise, he lifted the ship without having to push it into the sea with the labor of slaves.
This anecdote, or the other one, according to which he found the solution to a problem while inside the bathtub of a public bank and ran naked through the streets shouting Eureka! (I found it), would be enough to create the idea of the genius of Archimedes of Syracuse: not only one of the greatest mathematicians of antiquity and inventor-discoverer, but a master of science-spectacle, capable of bewildering the greats of the time, friends and opponents, by putting his knowledge at the service of citizens.
His scientific work intersects with that of his city. Born in Syracuse in 287 BC and most likely the son of the astronomer Phidias, who transmitted to him his great passion for the sciences, the young Archimedes studied in Alexandria, Egypt, where he was a student of Euclid. Between 264 and 250 he made his first invention: a planetarium, which became famous throughout the ancient world and which was able to simulate the apparent movement of the Sun around the Earth. He then studied fluids and forces, realizing the famous thrust that lifted water, an odometer (ancient predecessor of the kilometer counter) and an accurate water clock.
He preceded Newton and Leibniz in calculating integrals by two thousand years, but his greatest achievements were in the field of geometry. In 240 he wrote some of his most important mathematical works: "On Spirals" and "On the Sphere and Cylinder", in which he calculated that the volume of a sphere is two-thirds the volume of the cylinder that surrounds it, a discovery of which he was so proud that he asked for it to appear as an epitaph on his tomb. In addition, he calculated the first four decimal digits of phi (3.1416).
According to Plutarch, Archimedes was so fascinated by geometry that he forgot to eat: when slaves dragged him to the bath to wash and anoint him, he would draw geometric figures in the ashes. However, public life called him to defend the city. When, with the outbreak of the Second Carthaginian War, the Roman consul Marcellus besieged Syracuse by land and sea, the terrified villagers went to find refuge in the most precious resource they had: the genius of Archimedes. In fact, the mathematician invented and perfected extraordinary war machines: catapults and stone throwers to bombard enemy ships, powerful iron hooks to stop and sink them, mirrors to set them on fire.
His fame was so great that the consul Marcello, when he conquered the city, ordered his life to be spared. But the Syracusan master, according to legend, was mistakenly killed by a soldier. / bota.al
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