Archimedes of Syracuse

287 BC - 212 BC

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Archimedes was the greatest mathematician of his age. His contributions in geometry revolutionised the subject and his methods anticipated the integral calculus 2,000 years before Newton and Leibniz. He was also a thoroughly practical man who invented a wide variety of machines including pulleys and the Archimidean screw pumping device.
Full MacTutor biography [Version for printing]
List of References (82 books/articles)

Some Quotations (9)

A Poster of Archimedes

Mathematicians born in the same country

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Additional Material in MacTutor

  1. Archimedes on mechanical and geometric methods
  2. Archimedes' Quadrature of the parabola
  3. Archimedes on statics

Honours awarded to Archimedes
(Click below for those honoured in this way)
Lunar featuresCrater Archimedes and Rimae Archimedes and Montes Archimedes
Popular biographies listNumber 4

Other Web sites
  1. Encyclopaedia Britannica
  2. Astroseti (A Spanish translation of this biography)
  3. NNDB
  4. NAHSTE
  5. G M Philips (Archimedes' calculation of pi)
  6. University of Waterloo (The Sandreckoner)
  7. C Rorres
  8. Science Museum Florence
  9. Vatican exhibition
  10. MathWorld
  11. G Don Allen
  12. Kevin Brown (Some information about Archimedes' calculation of square roots)
  13. Kevin Brown (On spheres and cylinders)
  14. MIT (Plutarch's account of Archimedes' war machines and of his death)
  15. Peter Alfeld
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JOC/EFR © January 1999

The URL of this page is:
http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Mathematicians/Archimedes.html