Archimedes

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Born the son of an astronomer, Phidias, in 287 B.C., Archimedes' education began as a young man in Syracuse. He furthered his education in Alexandria, where he studied with fellow scholar Conon, an Egyptian mathematician.

What we know of Archimedes comes from his personal works as well as those of Cicero and Plutarch. However, "due to the length of time between Archimedes' death and his biographers' accounts, as well as inconsistencies among their writings, details of his life must remain subject to question" (Galenet 1).

It is doubtless that Archimedes was the greatest geometer of his time, and he has not been paralleled since then. To imagine just how much knowledge he discovered, and the amount of intelligence he must have had to discover it, is practically impossible. "Archimedes' contributions to mathematical knowledge were diverse" (Galenet 1). He discovered the concepts of Pi, the area of a circle, wrote principles on plane/solid geometry, and developed a somewhat rudimentary form of calculus.

In his dealings with plane geometry, Archimedes wrote several treatises, three of which survive today: Measurement of a Circle, Quatdrature of the Parabola, and On Spirals. It is in Measurements of a Circle that Archimedes reveals how he calculated Pi.

Pi was found by using a theoretically simple method. Pi represents the number 3.14... In turn, 3.14 represents the circumference of a circle. In order to find this number, Archimedes started with the obvious: draw a circle.

In this circle, he drew a six-sided polygon, with each vertex touching part of the circle. Similarly, he drew a hexagon on the outside of the circle, with each segment's midpoint touching part of the circle. He calculated the perimeters of both figures. Arch...

... middle of paper ...

...subject of arithmetic, Archimedes wrote several essays, the only one of which surviving is The Sand Reckoner. In the essay, Archimedes proposed ways of determining the number of grains of sand in the universe.

While the problem of sand was never solved, Archimedes has been found to be that one grain of sand in the universe that stands out against the rest. His greatness is still observed and learned about today by millions of students and scholars alike, all hoping for a glimpse into the mind of a genius.

With history being such an inconstant, it is left to us to wonder if Archimedes was truly so magnanimous, and it is also left to us to hope that one day the rest of his works will be recovered. If such a small portion of surviving information could sway the world to such a magnitude, imagine how different our world would be if the rest of his works were uncovered.

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