Archimedes is an outstanding ancient Greek mathematician, inventor and engineer who lived in the 3rd century BC. e. This man was born in 287 BC. e. in the city of Syracuse in Sicily. At that time it was a colony Ancient Greece and was called Magna Graecia. It included the territory of modern Southern Italy and Sicily.
The date of birth is known from the words of the Byzantine historian John Tsets. He lived in Constantinople in the XII century. That is, almost one and a half thousand years after Archimedes. He also wrote that the famous ancient Greek mathematician lived to be 75 years old. Such accurate information raises certain doubts, but let's show respect for the outstanding minds of antiquity and accept the indicated dates and figures as true.
Biography of Archimedes
So, an outstanding inhabitant of Great Greece was born in 287 BC. e., and died in 212 BC. e. His father was an astronomer named Phidias, about whom nothing is known. Family ties with the tyrant of Syracuse, Hieron II, are also assumed. Most detailed biography Archimedes was written by his friend Heraclid. But this work was lost, and therefore the details of the life of the mathematician and inventor remained unclear. Nothing is known about his wife and children, but there is no doubt that he studied in Alexandria, where the famous Library of Alexandria was located.
There, a young man striving for knowledge established friendly relations with the mathematician and astronomer Konon of Samos and the astronomer, mathematician and philologist Erastofen from Cyrene - these were famous scientists of that time. With them, our hero struck up a strong friendship. It lasted all my life, and was expressed in correspondence.
It was within the walls of the Library of Alexandria that Archimedes got acquainted with the works of such famous geometers as Eudoxus and Democritus. He also learned a lot of other useful knowledge and after a few years returned to his homeland in Syracuse. There he quickly established himself as an intelligent and gifted person, and lived for many years, enjoying the respect of others.
An outstanding personality died during the Second Punic War, when the Roman troops captured Syracuse after a 2-year siege. The commander of the Romans was Marcus Claudius Marcellus. According to Plutarch, he ordered Archimedes to be found and brought to him. A Roman soldier came to the house of an outstanding mathematician when he was thinking about mathematical formulas. The soldier demanded to immediately go with him and meet with Marcellus.
But the mathematician brushed off the obsessive Roman, saying that he must first complete the work. The soldier was indignant and stabbed the smartest inhabitant of Syracuse with a sword. There is also a version that claims that Archimedes was killed right on the street when he was carrying mathematical tools in his hands. The Roman soldiers decided that these were valuable items and stabbed the mathematician to death. But be that as it may, the death of this man outraged Marcellus, since his order was violated.
Archimedes is killed by a Roman soldier
140 years after these events, the famous Roman orator Cicero arrived in Sicily. He tried to find the tomb of Archimedes, but none of the locals knew where it was. Finally, the grave was found in a dilapidated state in a thicket of bushes on the outskirts of Syracuse. The gravestone depicted a sphere and a cylinder inscribed in it. Under them were embossed verses. However, this version has no documentary evidence.
In the early 60s of the XX century, an ancient grave was also discovered in the courtyard of the Panorama Hotel in Syracuse. The owners of the hotel began to claim that this is the burial place of the great mathematician and inventor of antiquity. But again, they did not provide any convincing evidence. In a word, to this day it is not known where Archimedes is buried, and where his grave is located.
This outstanding person made a very great contribution to the development of mathematics. He was able to find a general method for calculating volumes and areas using infinitesimal quantities. That is, it was he who laid the foundation for integral calculus. He also proved that the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter is a constant. He laid the foundation for differential calculus, that is, he did everything that mathematicians were able to continue only in the 17th century. From this we can safely say that this man overtook mathematical science for 2 thousand years.
In mechanics, he developed a lever and began to successfully apply it in practice. In the port of Syracuse, block-lever mechanisms were made that raised and lowered heavy loads. He also invented the Archimedean screw, with which water was scooped out. He created the theory of balancing equal bodies.
He proved that a buoyant force equal to the weight of the displaced fluid acts on a body immersed in a liquid. This idea came to him in the bath. She so shocked the outstanding mathematician and inventor with her simplicity that he jumped out of the bath and, dressed as Adam, ran through the streets of Syracuse, shouting "Eureka", which means "found". Subsequently, this proof was called Archimedes' law.
Archimedes' claw lifts a Roman ship
During the long siege of Syracuse by the Romans, Archimedes was already an elderly man, but his mind had not lost its sharpness. As Plutarch wrote, under his leadership, throwing machines were built, throwing heavy stones at Roman soldiers. Close range throwing machines were also made. They destroyed enemies near the walls, dropping barrels of boiling tar and stone balls on them.
Roman galleys scurrying in the port of Syracuse were attacked by special cranes with gripping hooks (Archimedes' claw). With the help of these hooks, the besieged lifted the ships into the air and threw them down high altitude. Ships, hitting the water, crashed and sank. All these technological advances frightened the invaders. They abandoned the assault on the city and moved on to a long siege.
There is a legend that Archimedes ordered the shields to be polished to a mirror shine, and then arranged in such a way that they, reflecting the color of the sun, focused it into powerful rays. They were sent to the Roman ships, and they burned down. Already in our time, the Greek scientist Ioannis Sakkas created a cascade of 70 copper mirrors and with his help set fire to the plywood model of the ship, which was located at a distance of 75 meters from the mirrors. So this legend could well have a practical basis.
A focused sunbeam sets fire to a ship
And, of course, the outstanding inventor could not ignore astronomy, because at that distant time she was extremely popular. He tried to determine the distance from the Earth to the planets, but he was guided by the fact that the center of the world is the Earth, and the Sun and Moon revolve around it. At the same time, he assumed that Mars, Mercury and Venus revolve around the Sun.
Legacy of Archimedes
Archimedes wrote his works in Doric Greek, a dialect spoken in Syracuse. But the originals have not survived. They have come down to us in the retelling of other authors. All this was systematized and collected in a single collection by the Byzantine architect Isidore from Miletus, who lived in Constantinople in the 6th century. This collection in the 9th century was translated into Arabic, and in the XII century it was translated into Latin.
During the Renaissance, the works of the Greek thinker were published in Basel in Latin and Greek. Based on these works, Galileo Galilei invented the hydrostatic balance at the end of the 16th century.
In 1906, Danish professor Johan Ludwig Heiberg discovered in Constantinople a 174-page prayer book written in the 13th century. The scientist found out that it was a palimpsest, that is, a text written over an old text. This was common practice at the time, as the goatskin leather used to make the pages was very expensive. The old text was scraped off, and a new one was applied on top of it.
It turned out that the scraped work was a copy of an unknown treatise by Archimedes. A copy was written in the X century. With the help of ultraviolet and X-ray light, this hitherto unknown work was read. These were works on balance, on measuring the circumference of a sphere and a cylinder, on floating bodies. Currently, this document is stored in the Museum of the city of Baltimore (Maryland, USA).
Archimedes was born in 287 BC, in Syracuse. A relative of the future scientist was Hieron, who later became the ruler of Syracuse Hieron II. Archimedes' father Phidias, an outstanding astronomer and mathematician, was at court. For this reason, the boy received a decent education.
Realizing that he lacked theoretical knowledge, the young man soon went to study in Alexandria, where at that time the brightest minds of antiquity worked.
Archimedes spent most of his time in the Library of Alexandria. There he studied the works of Democritus and Eudoxus. During his training, Archimedes became close to Eratosthenes and Conon. The friendship lasted for many years.
Works and achievements
After completing his studies, Archimedes returned to his native Syracuse and took up the position of astronomer at the court of Hieron II. But not only the stars attracted his attention.
The position of an astronomer was not burdensome. Archimedes had the opportunity to study mechanics, physics and mathematics. At this time, the principle of the lever was applied by the researcher to solve several problems in geometry.
The conclusions were detailed in the work “On the equilibrium of plane figures”.
A little later, Archimedes wrote the essay “On the Measurement of a Circle”. He was able to calculate the ratio of the diameter of a circle to its length.
Studying a brief biography of Archimedes, you should know that he also paid attention to geometric optics. He carried out several interesting experiments on the refraction of light. The theorem has come down to our days. It proves that against the background of the reflection of a beam of light from a mirror surface, the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection.
Gifts to Syracuse
Archimedes made many useful discoveries. All of them were dedicated to the native city of the scientist. Archimedes actively developed the idea of using the lever. In the port of Syracuse, he managed to create a whole system of lever-and-block mechanisms that speed up the process of transporting heavy, oversized cargo.
With the help of the Archimedean screw, or auger, it became possible to extract water from low-lying reservoirs. Thanks to this, irrigation canals began to receive moisture uninterruptedly.
The main service to Syracuse was provided by Archimedes in 212. The scientist took an active part in the defense of Syracuse, which were besieged by Roman troops. Archimedes managed to create some of the most powerful throwing machines. When the Romans broke into the city, many of them fell under the blows of stones fired from these machines.
Archimedean cranes easily overturned Roman ships. This led to the fact that the Roman soldiers abandoned the assault on the city and began a long siege.
Unfortunately, in the end, the city was taken.
Death of a scientist
The story of the death of Archimedes was transmitted by John Zetz, Plutarch, Diodorus Siculus and Titus Livius. The details of the death of the great scientist vary. One thing is common: Archimedes was killed by a certain Roman soldier. According to one version, the Roman did not wait until Archimedes completed the drawing, and for refusing to follow the consul, he stabbed him with a sword.
Another version says that the scientist was killed on the way to Marcellus. The Roman soldiers seemed suspicious of the instruments for measuring the Sun, which Archimedes carried in his hands.
Consul Marcellus, having learned about the death of a scientist, was upset. The body of Archimedes was buried with great honors, and "great respect" was shown to his relatives.
Other biography options
- One day Archimedes exclaimed, “Give me a foothold, and I will move the Earth!” In the eyes of his contemporaries, the outstanding scientist was practically a demigod.
- According to legend, the Syracusans managed to burn several Roman ships. This was done with the help of huge mirrors, the amazing properties of which were also discovered by Archimedes.
Biography score
New feature! The average rating this biography received. Show rating
More than two thousand years ago, the entire western part of the Mediterranean coast was engulfed in the flames of a grandiose war. Military operations took place in Italy and Sicily, North Africa and Spain. This war is known in world history as the second Punic War, in which Rome and Carthage fought for dominance in the Mediterranean.
The famous commander from Carthage - Hannibal, in order to deliver a mortal blow to the very heart of the enemy, conceived a rather bold plan to fight Rome - in Italy itself. In 218 B.C. new era with a large army and fighting elephants, he crossed the Pyrenees, southern Gaul and through the Alps penetrated into northern Italy. On the fields of Italy, Hannibal defeated three Roman armies in succession and in 216 dealt a crushing blow to the Romans at Cannae. The entire Roman army was destroyed. A number of Roman allies (Capua and others) went over to the side of Carthage. The freedom-loving citizens of the city of Syracuse also rebelled against Roman rule.
Syracuse, one of the greatest cities of antiquity, the center of Greek science and art in the West, was a Greek colony located on the southeastern coast of Sicily. The circumference of the powerful city wall was 23.5 kilometers. For a long time, Syracuse was an independent state, the first Greek maritime power. But in the III century. BC, Rome advanced on Sicily from the north, and Carthage from the south. During the First Punic War, Sicily was conquered by the Romans, and the inhabitants of Syracuse had to accept Roman hegemony.
In order to punish the rebellious for the uprising, the Roman fleet and army, led by the talented commander Marcus Claudius Marcellus, approached the city in 213. Horror seized the inhabitants. Marcellus had just stormed another Sicilian city, Leontine, and executed two thousand defectors from the Roman camp. The same fate awaited this city.
Over a hundred Roman ships entered Syracuse harbor. Marcellus arrayed them in battle order. Linked in pairs, penthers with wooden towers, lifting machines and siege weapons came close to the wall. Marcellus signaled for the machines to raise the drawbridges to the level of the walls and lower them onto the walls. On the lowered bridges, the Roman soldiers were supposed to break into the city with an indomitable avalanche. The fall of the city seemed inevitable. The assault began from the sea and land. But no sooner had the vehicles on penthers lifted the drawbridges, than the catapults and ballistae had had time to throw their shells, when something unexpected happened.
Iron hooks and “paws” unexpectedly descended from huge levers placed on the battlements of the walls. They clung to the bows of the ships, lifted them up, overturned, smashed them against the coastal rocks and cliffs at the foot of the city wall, drowned them in the depths of the sea. Then Marcellus, according to the Greek historian Plutarch, advanced a ram on the platform. When he approached the wall, the townspeople threw several stones weighing more than a hundred kilograms at him. They completely smashed it. The stones were followed by lead balls, huge logs that sank ships in the sea.
Broken Roman ships moved away from the city wall. Marcellus decided to resume the assault at night. He expected that the machines throwing shells would be powerless at night. Projectiles thrown at random will fly over the heads of the besiegers. But the talented leader of the defense took this circumstance into account: he positioned his spear-throwing machines so that they constantly threw out short spears that hit the enemy.
The Roman fleet received a well-deserved lesson. The same fate befell the Roman army from the side of the land. And here the Roman siege weapons and warriors were met with iron hooks, hooks, "scorpions" that picked up the soldiers and threw them on the stones. The proud Roman had to give up his thoughts of taking the city by storm. He decided to move to a blockade and starve the inhabitants out. But it was difficult for the army to cordon off the entire city, and the inhabitants maintained contact with the outside world.
Archimedes - life and scientific works
Who was this most talented engineer, organizer of defense, builder of ingenious machines, who forced the invincible Roman army to retreat?
It was the greatest physicist and mathematician of antiquity - Archimedes, who applied all his brilliant abilities to organize the defense of his native city.
Archimedes was born in Syracuse in 287 BC. According to the well-known Roman politician and orator Cicero, Archimedes was of low social status and lived in poverty. Plutarch claims that Archimedes was fond of mathematics already in childhood. The journey to Egypt had a great influence on the young man, where he visited the city of Alexandria, the center of Hellenic culture. Returning to his homeland, he devoted himself entirely to science and wrote a number of brilliant mathematical works.
Most Greek scientists IV-III centuries. BC. treated not only condescendingly, but also somewhat contemptuously towards mathematics, if it pursued utilitarian goals. Archimedes did not dissociate himself from the people and did not lock himself in his office from the domestic needs of his fellow citizens. He tried to apply his knowledge to practical life, to make all the achievements of science the property of the people and often demonstrated his discoveries to the citizens of Syracuse.
Unfortunately, not all the works of the genius survived. At various times, the following writings of his were found:
- On the equilibrium of plane figures.
- On the quadrature of a parabola.
- About floating bodies.
- On the measurement of a circle.
- About a sphere and a cylinder.
- About conoids and spheroids, i.e. about bodies learned from the rotation of various figures.
- About spirals.
- "Psummit".
- Separate theorems (lemmas).
- Stamachion - about the permutation of flat figures.
In 1907, a new manuscript of the "Ephodik" (manual) was found, which contains theorems on the volumes of cones, as well as spheroids and conoids.
The following works of the scientist are considered lost:
- About a heptagon in a circle.
- About the contact of circles.
- About parallel lines.
- About triangles.
- About definitions and data.
- Book "Archai".
In the works “On the Sphere and Cylinder”, the scientist proves that the ratio of the volumes of a cone, hemisphere and cylinder with the same bases and heights is equal to the ratio 1: 2: 3.
Among other problems proposed in the second book is the famous problem of dividing a ball by a plane into two parts. Archimedes gave the correct solution to this problem, bringing it to a problem of an algebraic nature. Archimedes attached special importance to this work of his.
In the book on the spiral, the scientist considers the properties of the so-called Archimedean spiral.
In Psammit, he set out to prove that gigantic numbers can be expressed.
In the works "On Floating Bodies" Archimedes establishes the basic principles of hydrostatics and hydrodynamics. This law was found thanks to the following case. The ruler of Syracuse ordered a gold crown from a jeweler. But he was informed that the jeweler hid some of the gold and replaced it with silver! The king could not verify the correctness of the report and turned to the scientist with a request to find out how much silver was mixed.
Archimedes, while taking a bath, drew attention to the fact that as much water flows out of the bath as his body displaces. Delighted by this discovery with the exclamation "Eureka! Eureka!”, he jumped out of the bath and ran undressed to test his theory. Archimedes is credited with up to forty discoveries in the field of mechanics. When the Syracusan king built his famous ship with a displacement of 4,000 tons, Archimedes supplied this ship with a stone-throwing machine that threw stones weighing 80 kg and spears for a considerable distance. He built a screw, named after him the Archimedean screw. This is a water-lifting machine, in which a helical spiral passes inside a cylindrical pipe. The pipe is open at both ends and placed obliquely. With strong rotation, the pipe captures water at the lower end, the water rises in a spiral and pours out at the upper end. There is evidence to suggest that the Archimedean screw was used to dry swamps in Egypt. In the future, he served as the basis for the construction of the propeller of the ship, and found application in the automotive industry.
The scientist developed the theory of the composite block, lever and screw and applied them in practical life. With the help of blocks, he moved heavy weights. Archimedes owns the famous exclamation: "Give me a fulcrum, and I will turn the Earth."
He built a planetarium or "air globe" that rotated through a system of blocks. The planetarium showed the movement of the planets around the Earth.
Death of Archimedes
But back to the city besieged by the Romans. The siege of the city has been going on for three years. Archimedes mobilized all his knowledge by building new machines. Popular rumor added legendary ones to his skillful structures (some writers, for example, say that Archimedes allegedly built incendiary glasses and with their help collected the sun's rays, pointed them at Roman ships and burned them).
The class struggle intensified among the besieged. The Syracusan nobility, who supported the side of Rome, entered into negotiations with Marcellus, and the city was taken by the Romans due to the betrayal of the nobility. Marcellus allowed his warriors to "plunder treasures and capture slaves." Embittered by the long siege, hungry for prey, the Roman soldiers rushed like bloodthirsty jackals to the defenseless city. They broke into dwellings, robbed jewelry, mercilessly killing residents, including old people and children.
Deep in his thoughts, Archimedes sat over the drawings. He described with compasses on the floor geometric figures, not noticing the orgy of robbery and murder taking place in the city. Suddenly, a Roman soldier with a drawn sword burst into him. Seeing the newcomer, Archimedes shielded his geometric drawings from him and said: "Do not spoil my circles for me." The warrior, intoxicated by the thirst for profit in response to the words of Archimedes, dealt him a mortal blow with a sword.
So the great luminary of science went out in 212 BC ancient world. Out of respect for the brilliant thinker, Marcellus ordered to bury him with great honor. A cylinder with a ball inscribed in it was placed on the grave (this was the desire of Archimedes himself). But the grave was soon overgrown with shrubs. Only in 75 BC. e., the famous Cicero, being the ruler in Sicily, found among the abandoned graves a monument to Archimedes, depicting a cylinder. Cicero exclaims bitterly: “So one of the most glorious states, which once gave birth to so many learned people, did not know where the tombstone of the sharpest mind of its citizens was.”
After the fall of Greek culture, Archimedes was forgotten. Only the Arabs, who appreciated the mathematical genius of Archimedes, translated some of his writings into Arabic.
During the Renaissance, the creations of Archimedes were extracted from obscurity, published and admired by scientists.
Summing up the scientific and scientific-practical activities of Archimedes, it is clear that he is rightfully called the father of physics, physical experience, and physical mechanics. Archimedes founded statics as a mathematical science, gave grounds to hydrostatics, solved many geometric problems, developed methods for calculating the volume of bodies and the center of gravity, and established a connection between geometry and mechanics.
The greatest mathematician of antiquity - Archimedes - was a patriot who passionately loved his homeland, its independence and culture.
Archimedes (about 287 BC, Syracuse, Sicily - 212 BC, ibid) - an ancient Greek scientist, mathematician and mechanic, the founder of theoretical mechanics and hydrostatics.
Developed anticipating integral calculus methods for finding areas, surfaces and volumes of various figures and bodies.
Archimedes was born in 287 BC in the Greek city of Syracuse, where he lived almost his entire life. His father was Phidias, the court astronomer of the ruler of the city of Hieron. Archimedes, like many other ancient Greek scientists, studied in Alexandria, where the rulers of Egypt, the Ptolemies, gathered the best Greek scientists and thinkers, and also founded the famous, largest library in the world.
After studying in Alexandria, Archimedes returned to Syracuse again and inherited his father's position.
In theoretical terms, the work of this great scientist was blindingly multifaceted. The main works of Archimedes concerned various practical applications of mathematics (geometry), physics, hydrostatics and mechanics. In his work “Parabola of Quadrature”, Archimedes substantiated the method for calculating the area of a parabolic segment, and he did this two thousand years before the discovery of integral calculus. In the work “On the Measurement of a Circle”, Archimedes first calculated the number “pi” - the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter - and proved that it is the same for any circle. We still use the system of naming integers invented by Archimedes.
The mathematical method of Archimedes, connected with the mathematical works of the Pythagoreans and with the work of Euclid that completed them, as well as with the discoveries of Archimedes' contemporaries, led to the knowledge of the material space that surrounds us, to the knowledge of the theoretical form of objects located in this space, the form of a perfect, geometric form, to which objects more or less approach and whose laws must be known if we want to influence the material world.
But Archimedes also knew that objects have more than just shape and dimension: they move, or can move, or remain stationary under the influence of certain forces that move objects forward or bring them into balance. The great Syracusan studied these forces, inventing a new branch of mathematics in which material bodies, reduced to their geometric form, retain at the same time their heaviness. This geometry of weight is rational mechanics, it is statics, as well as hydrostatics, the first law of which was discovered by Archimedes (the law bearing the name of Archimedes), according to which a force equal to the weight of the liquid displaced by it acts on a body immersed in a liquid.
Once raising his leg in the water, Archimedes noted with surprise that his leg became lighter in the water. "Eureka! Found it,” he exclaimed as he stepped out of his bath. The anecdote is amusing, but, conveyed in this way, it is not accurate. The famous "Eureka!" was uttered not in connection with the discovery of the law of Archimedes, as is often said, but with regard to the law of the specific gravity of metals - a discovery that also belongs to the Syracusan scientist and the detailed details of which we find in Vitruvius.
It is said that one day Archimedes was approached by Hiero, the ruler of Syracuse. He ordered to check whether the weight of the golden crown corresponds to the weight of the gold allotted to it. To do this, Archimedes made two ingots, one of gold, the other of silver, each of the same weight as the crown. Then he put them in turn in a vessel with water, noted how much its level had risen. Having lowered the crown into the vessel, Archimedes found that its volume exceeds the volume of the ingot. So the dishonesty of the master was proved.
The review of the great orator of antiquity, who saw the "Archimedean sphere" - a model showing the movement of heavenly bodies around the Earth, is curious: "This Sicilian possessed a genius that, it would seem, human nature cannot achieve."
And, finally, Archimedes was not only a great scientist, he was, moreover, a man passionate about mechanics. He tests and creates a theory of five mechanisms known in his time and referred to as "simple mechanisms". This is a lever (“Give me a fulcrum,” said Archimedes, “and I will move the Earth”), a wedge, a block, an endless screw and a winch. It is Archimedes who is often credited with the invention of the infinite screw, but it is possible that he only improved the hydraulic screw, which served the Egyptians in draining swamps. Subsequently, these mechanisms were widely used in different countries of the world. Interestingly, an improved version of the water-lifting machine could be found at the beginning of the 20th century in a monastery located on Valaam, one of the northern Russian islands. Today, the Archimedean screw is used, for example, in an ordinary meat grinder.
The invention of the infinite screw led him to another important invention, even if it had become commonplace, the invention of a bolt constructed from a screw and a nut.
To those of his fellow citizens who would consider such inventions worthless, Archimedes presented decisive evidence to the contrary on the day when, by cunningly fitting a lever, screw and winch, he found a means, to the surprise of onlookers, to launch a heavy galley that had run aground, with everything her crew and cargo.
Even more convincing proof he gave in 212 BC. During the defense of Syracuse from the Romans during the Second Punic War, Archimedes designed several fighting machines that allowed the townspeople to repel the attacks of the outnumbered Romans for almost three years. One of them was a system of mirrors, with which the Egyptians were able to burn the Roman fleet. This feat of his, which Plutarch, Polybius and Titus Livy told about, of course, aroused greater sympathy among ordinary people than calculating the number "pi" - another feat of Archimedes, very useful in our time for students of mathematics.
Archimedes died during the siege of Syracuse - he was killed by a Roman soldier at the moment when the scientist was absorbed in the search for a solution to the problem set before him.
It is curious that, having conquered Syracuse, the Romans did not become the owners of the works of Archimedes. Only after many centuries they were discovered by European scientists. That is why Plutarch, one of the first to describe the life of Archimedes, mentioned with regret that the scientist did not leave a single work.
Plutarch writes that Archimedes died at a ripe old age. A plate depicting a sphere and a cylinder was placed on his grave. She was seen by Cicero, who visited Sicily 137 years after the scientist's death. Only in the XVI-XVII centuries, European mathematicians were finally able to realize the significance of what was done by Archimedes two thousand years before them.
Archimedes left numerous disciples. A whole generation of followers, enthusiasts rushed to the new path opened by him, who, like the teacher, were eager to prove their knowledge with concrete conquests.
The first of these students was the Alexandrian Ctesibius, who lived in the 2nd century BC. Archimedes' inventions in the field of mechanics were at full speed when Ctesibius added to them the invention of the cogwheel. (Samin D.K. 100 great scientists. - M .: Veche, 2000)
In the fundamental works on statics and hydrostatics (the law of Archimedes), Archimedes gave examples of the application of mathematics in natural science and technology. Archimedes owns many technical inventions (Archimedean screw, determining the composition of alloys by weighing in water, systems for lifting heavy weights, military throwing machines), which won him extraordinary popularity among his contemporaries.
Archimedes was educated by his father, the astronomer and mathematician Phidias, a relative of the Syracusan tyrant Hieron II, who patronized Archimedes. In his youth, he spent several years in the largest cultural center of that time, Alexandria of Egypt, where he met Erastosthenes. Then he lived in Syracuse until the end of his life.
During the Second Punic War (218-201), when Syracuse was besieged by the army of the Roman commander Marcellus, Archimedes took part in the defense of the city and built throwing weapons. The military inventions of the scientist (Plutarch told about them in the biography of the commander Marcellus) for two years helped to restrain the siege of Syracuse by the Romans. Archimedes is credited with burning the Roman fleet with sun rays directed through a system of concave mirrors, but this is unreliable information. The genius of Archimedes was admired even by the Romans. Marcellus ordered to save the scientist's life, but during the capture of Syracuse, Archimedes was killed.
Archimedes holds the primacy in many discoveries from the field of exact sciences. Thirteen treatises of Archimedes have come down to us. In the most famous of them - "On the ball and the cylinder" (in two books), Archimedes establishes that the surface area of the ball is 4 times the area of \u200b\u200bits largest section; formulates the ratio of the volumes of the ball and the cylinder described next to it as 2:3 - a discovery that he cherished so much that in his will he asked to put a monument on his grave with the image of a cylinder with a ball inscribed in it and an inscription of the calculation (the monument was seen by Cicero a century and a half later). The same treatise formulated the axiom of Archimedes (sometimes called the axiom of Eudoxus), which plays an important role in modern mathematics.
In the treatise "On Conoids and Spheroids" Archimedes considers a sphere, an ellipsoid, a paraboloid and a hyperboloid of revolution and their segments and determines their volumes. In the essay "On Spirals" he explores the properties of the curve that received his name (the Archimedean spiral) and the tangent to it. In the treatise "Measuring the Circle", Archimedes offers a method for determining the number π, which was used until the end of the 17th century, and indicates two surprisingly accurate limits for the number π:
3·10/71 In physics, Archimedes introduced the concept of the center of gravity, established the scientific principles of statics and hydrostatics, and gave examples of the application of mathematical methods in physical research. The main provisions of statics are formulated in the essay "On the equilibrium of plane figures."
Archimedes considers the addition of parallel forces, defines the concept of the center of gravity for various figures, and gives the derivation of the law of the lever. The famous law of hydrostatics, which entered science with his name (Archimedes' law), was formulated in the treatise On Floating Bodies. There is a legend that the idea of this law visited Archimedes when he was taking a bath, with the exclamation "Eureka!" he jumped out of the bath and ran naked to write down the scientific truth that had come to him.
Archimedes' principle: any body immersed in a liquid is subjected to a buoyant force directed upward and equal to the weight of the liquid displaced by it. Archimedes' law is also valid for gases.
F - buoyancy force;
P is the force of gravity acting on the body.
Archimedes built the celestial sphere - a mechanical device on which it was possible to observe the movement of the planets, the Sun and the Moon (described by Cicero, after the death of Archimedes, the planetarium was taken by Marcellus to Rome, where for several centuries it aroused admiration); a hydraulic organ, mentioned by Tertullian as one of the marvels of technology (some attribute the invention of the organ to the Alexandrian engineer Ctesibius).
It is believed that in his youth, during his stay in Alexandria, Archimedes invented a water-lifting mechanism (Archimedes screw), which was used to drain the lands flooded by the Nile. He also built a device for determining the apparent (angular) diameter of the Sun (Archimedes talks about it in the treatise Psammit) and determined the value of this angle.
The biography of Archimedes is full of white spots. Historians know little about the life of an outstanding scientist, since the chronicles of that period contain only scarce information, but the description of his works tells in sufficient detail about achievements in the field of physics, mathematics, astronomy and technology. His work was far ahead of its time and was appreciated only centuries later, when scientific progress reached the appropriate level.
Childhood and youth
A brief biography of Archimedes is available to researchers. He was born in 287 BC. e. in the city of Syracuse, which was located on the east coast of the island of Sicily and at that time was a Greek colony. The father of the future scientist, a mathematician and astronomer named Phidias, from childhood instilled in his son a love of science. Hieron, who later became the ruler of Syracuse, was a close relative of the family, so the boy was provided with an excellent education.
Then, feeling a lack of theoretical knowledge, the young man left for Alexandria, where the most brilliant minds of that era worked. Archimedes spent many hours in the Library of Alexandria, where the largest collection of books was collected. There he studied the works of Democritus, the Greek philosopher, and Eudoxus, the famous mechanic, astronomer, mathematician and physician. In the process of learning, the future scientist made friends with Eratosthenes, the head of the Alexandrian Library, and Konon. This friendship lasted for many years.
Service at the court of Hieron II
After completing his education, Archimedes returned to his homeland in Syracuse and began working as a court astronomer in the palace of Hieron II. However, not only the stars were interested in the inquisitive youthful mind. Work on astronomy was not difficult, so that the scientist had enough time to study physics, mathematics and engineering. During this period, Archimedes discovered his famous principle of using a lever and detailed his developments in the book On the Balance of Plane Figures. Then the world saw another work of the great scientist, which was called "On the Measurement of a Circle", where the author explained how to calculate the dependence of the diameter of a circle on its length.
The biography of Archimedes the mathematician includes information about the period of study of geometric optics. A gifted young man conducted unique experiments on the study of the refraction of light, and managed to derive a mathematical theorem that has retained its relevance to this day. This work contains evidence that the angle of incidence of a beam on mirror surface equal to the angle reflections.
It is useful to get acquainted with the biography of Archimedes and his discoveries, if only because the latter changed the course of the development of science. Through extensive research in mathematics, Archimedes discovered a more advanced way to calculate the area of complex figures than what existed at that time. Later, these studies formed the basis of the theory of integral calculus. Also, the work of his hands is the construction of a planetarium: a complex device that clearly and reliably demonstrates the movement of the Sun and planets.
Personal life
short biography Archimedes and his discoveries are well studied, but the personal life of the scientist is shrouded in a veil of secrecy. Neither the contemporaries of the great explorer, nor the historians who have studied his life path, provided any data about his family or possible descendants.
Service to Syracuse
As follows from the biography of Archimedes, his discoveries in physics did a great service to his native city. After the discovery of the lever, Archimedes actively developed his theory and found useful information for it. practical use. In the port of Syracuse, a complex structure was created, consisting of block-lever devices. Thanks to this engineering solution, the process of loading and unloading ships was significantly accelerated, and heavy, oversized cargo was moved easily and with little or no effort. The invention of the screw made it possible to collect water from low-lying reservoirs and raise it to a great height. This was an important achievement, since Syracuse is located in a mountainous area, and the delivery of water was a serious problem. Irrigation canals were filled with life-giving moisture and uninterruptedly supplied the inhabitants of the island.
However, Archimedes presented the main gift to his native city during the siege of Syracuse by the Roman army in 212 BC. e. The scientist took an active part in the defense and built several powerful throwing mechanisms. After the enemy troops managed to break through the city walls, most of the attackers died under a hail of stones fired from Archimedes' machines.
With the help of huge levers, also created by the scientist, the Syracusans were able to turn over the Roman ships and stop the attack. As a result, the Romans stopped the assault and switched to the tactics of a long siege. Eventually the city fell.
Death
The biography of Archimedes, a physicist, engineer and mathematician, ended after the capture of Syracuse by the Romans in 212 BC. e. The stories of his death, told by various prominent historians of that era, are somewhat different. According to one version, a Roman soldier broke into the house of Archimedes to escort him to the consul, and when the scientist refused to stop work and follow him, he killed him with a sword. According to another version, the Roman nevertheless allowed the drawing to be completed, but Archimedes was stabbed to death on the way to the consul. The researcher took with him instruments for studying the Sun, but the mysterious objects seemed too suspicious to the uneducated guards, and the scientist was killed. At that time he was about 75 years old.
Upon receiving the news of the death of Archimedes, the consul was saddened: rumors about the talent of the scientist and his achievements reached the ears of the Romans, so the new ruler hoped to attract Archimedes to his side. The body of the deceased researcher was buried with the greatest honors.
Tomb of Archimedes
150 years after the death of Archimedes, whose biography and achievements admired the Roman rulers, a search was organized for the place of the alleged burial. By that time, the scientist's grave was abandoned, and its location was forgotten, so the search turned out to be a difficult task. Mark Thulius Cicero, who ruled Syracuse on behalf of the Roman emperor, wished to erect a majestic monument on the grave, but, unfortunately, this structure has not been preserved. The burial place is located on the territory of the Archaeological Park of Naples, which is located near modern Syracuse.
Law of Archimedes
One of the most famous discoveries of the scientist was the so-called Law of Archimedes. The researcher determined that any physical body lowered into water exerts upward pressure. The liquid is displaced in a volume that is equal to the volume of the physical body, and does not depend on the density of the liquid itself.
Over time, the opening has acquired many myths and legends. According to one of the existing versions, Hieron II suspected that his royal crown was a fake and was not made of gold at all. He instructed Archimedes to sort it out and give a clear answer. To draw correct conclusions, it was necessary to measure the volume and weight of the object, and then compare it with a similar gold bar. Finding out the exact weight of the crown was not difficult, but how to calculate its volume? The answer came at the moment when the scientist was taking a bath. He realized that the volume of the crown, like any other physical body immersed in a liquid, is equal to the volume of the liquid being displaced. It was at this moment that Archimedes exclaimed, "Eureka!"
Archimedes considered his best friend not man, but mathematics.
Throwing machines, which the scientist built during the assault on Syracuse by Roman troops, could lift stones weighing up to 250 kg, which was an absolute record at that time.
Archimedes invented the screw while still a young man. Thanks to this invention, water flowed to the highlands and irrigated the fields, and the Egyptians still use this mechanism for irrigation.
Although the biography of Archimedes is full of mysteries and gaps, his achievements in the field of science are undeniable. Most of the discoveries made by scientists almost 2300 years ago are still used today.