When was Archimedes born and when did he die?
Archimedes of Syracuse was born around 287 BC and died in 212 BC at the age of seventy-five years. His life spanned from the late 4th century BC to the early 3rd century BC during the Hellenistic period.
Common questions about Archimedes
Short answers, pulled from the story.
What happened to Archimedes during the Roman siege of Syracuse in 214 BC?
Archimedes constructed war machines including improved catapults and cranes to defend Syracuse against the Roman army under Marcus Claudius Marcellus starting in 214 BC. He was killed by a Roman soldier in 212 BC while drawing figures in the dust and refusing to leave his work.
How did Archimedes prove the goldsmith cheated King Hiero II of Syracuse?
Archimedes determined the volume of the golden wreath by measuring the water displaced when the object was submerged in a bath. He compared this displacement to that of pure gold and pure silver of equal weight to prove the goldsmith had substituted silver.
What mathematical method did Archimedes use to approximate the value of pi?
Archimedes employed the method of exhaustion in his work Measurement of a Circle to approximate pi by drawing polygons with 96 sides inside and outside a circle. This technique determined that pi lay between 3 and 3 1/7, a remarkably accurate approximation for his time.
When was the Archimedes Palimpsest discovered and what did it contain?
The Danish professor Johan Ludvig Heiberg discovered the Archimedes Palimpsest in 1906 at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. The 174-page goatskin parchment contained 10th-century copies of previously lost treatises by Archimedes including On Floating Bodies and The Method of Mechanical Theorems.